¶1Does cosmic fine-tuning point to the existence of God? I'm John Nelson and today on Unbelievable, we're looking again at the argument from fine-tuning with two philosophers who are at the cutting edge of its research. On my left is Miles Donahghue, a PhD student working on the fine-tuning argument at the University of Oxford. He is already the author of several journal articles on fine-tuning and is the host of uncertainty, a fantastic podcast if you haven't come across it. And on my right is Dr.
¶2Alex Malpass, an honorary fellow in the philosophy department at the University of Edinburgh with a PhD in philosophical logic. Among Alex's many publications and contributions to philosophy of religion, he's currently working on a rebuttal to the fine-tuning argument, and his YouTube channel is Thortology. >> Gentlemen, welcome to Unbelievable. >> Thank you very much. >> Yeah, thank you for having me.
¶3>> Alex, you're becoming something of a veteran on the show, having recently debated, I think, very well with William Lane Craig on the Kalam. >> I'm now in his seat, so I've been promoting. >> You are. But Miles, you are new to Unbelievable. Um, I saw you in the comments section of another debate we did on fine-tuning saying, "Put me in, coach." And I thought, "We actually do need to put you in." Um, so you're you're currently doing a PhD at the University of Oxford, right?
¶4>> And for some listeners, maybe some of our more nerdy listeners, you know, this is the dream to be at Oxford studying an argument for the existence of God. I'm just interested, you know, how did you become interested in, you know, making a career, making uh sort of your professional life around the arguments for the existence of God, >> right? Well, I mean, it's still aspirational, right? I'm a PhD student and we'll see how it goes, but it's working out so far. I would say that focus built up gradually.
¶5I've always been interested in philosophy of religion and when I went to do my master's degree at Oxford, it was in philosophical theology. And then your second year you got to pick a topic and you had a dissertation you could write on anything you wanted. And I picked event eventually I just had to pick and so I just plucked fine-tuning out of the list. It was moderately interesting to me. It wasn't my passion prior to that but I think I just was extremely lucky in a sense because I've discovered that it's like the best sweet spot of like this interdisciplinary research project.
¶6So you really never get bored. I mean, I've had several papers on like just fine-tuning, quote unquote, but it turns out that even a narrow aspect of this argument intersects with science, with the pro with probability, philosophy generally, epistemology, and and so you can you can learn so many things by just doing this one thing. And when I realized that, I thought, okay, this is this is the one that I want. >> So, it wasn't that you thought that fine-tuning was a sort of particularly compelling argument for [clears throat] God's existence. You just found it interesting and went with it.
¶7Well, and it's provocative, right? It's the claim that scientific evidence points to God. And I think that's like more gripping for more people than maybe a purely philosophical uh thought experiment that points to God or something like the ontological argument, which just is about thinking about these things. But but fine-tuning is the claim that no, our best scientific evidence indicates uh evidence for the existence of God, which I think is just inherently compelling. >> Yeah.
¶8And there's something sort of intuitively fascinating about the figures. When I was doing some school teaching, I would show them the reasonable faith, the William Lane Craig video on fine-tuning with the needle in the hay stack and you know finding an atom in the sun and all this sort of thing and and I think there's just something gripping about it. So how would how would you formulate this argument from fine-tuning? >> I think you can do it at different levels of complexity, but at at the simplest level, which I think is perfectly sufficient, it's a it's a two-step argument. The first is establishing that the universe is fine-tuned for life.
¶9And then the second is establishing that fine-tuning is evidence for theism over various atheistic alternatives like naturalism. The thesis that the natural world is all there is. So step one is the least controversial of the two that the universe is fine-tuned for life. What this means is that the various parameters of physics, those parameters that dictate particle masses or force strengths are such that if you adjust them or alter them even slightly relative to their possible range of values, you get a physics that just doesn't permit complex structure of any kind, much less life. >> Um, sometimes you get a universe devoid of anything except for hydrogen gas, which can't permit any sort of complexity.
¶10Or you get a universe that collapses in on itself shortly after the Big Bang. again very detrimental impacts. Um, and so when you see that the range of possible values for all of these parameters are are huge and that only the the range that allows for life or complexity or anything of value is extremely narrow, you naturally ask why did the constants and the initial conditions the parameters generally did fall into the life permitting range. >> So that's that's the first step. I mean to give just one example the cosmological constant is a fairly well established example of fine-tuning.
¶11Uh it it's fine-tuned to one part in 10 to the 90. So one part uh in 10 followed by 90 zeros which is just extremely small. And these examples are relatively uncontroversial. Luke Barnes has a recent paper where he gives four examples like that. um and we can discuss those but I think I think that first step is basically uncontroversial at least with respect to the underlying theories of physics they are fine-tuned for life in that way and then the second step is contending that this is evidence for theism over the alternatives and the the basic principle in the background is that if an observation is more likely given one hypothesis than given another then that observation is evidence for the first hypothesis over the other.
¶12So, if you're walking along the beach one day and you see Frank was here written out in the sand, that's going to be pretty strong evidence that Frank was there. And that's because it's more likely an outcome to observe if Frank was there than if he wasn't. If it just happened randomly, the odds of that configuration are extremely low. Same idea with respect to theism and naturalism. Um, if naturalism is true, there's nothing special about the life permitting range as such.
¶13the fact that it permits life, the fact that it permits things of value, uh, is just irrelevant to what we would expect if naturalism is true. And so given the huge range of possible values, the natural assumption is they're all equally likely as far as naturalism is concerned. And given then that the life permitting range is so small, it follows that the the likelihood of all of these constants falling into that range is very, very small. But if theism is true, if a perfectly good, all- knowing, all powerful God exists, then it's not at all unlikely that God would fine-tune the universe for life, would want to create a universe with life. When when you focus in on God's being perfectly loving, I think the intuition is pretty clear that such a being, if they created a universe, would almost certainly create it so that things of value would be possible, >> like life, conscious agents, people, relationships, love, and and so on and so forth.
¶14>> So that's that's the idea in a nutshell. So this isn't some kind of proof of God's existence. This is uh an inductive argument, an argument for sort of the best explanation. >> Yes. Yes.
¶15The way I formulated it and the way I think of it, fine-tuning is strong evidence for theism over a range of alternatives, one of which is naturalism, which I imagine we'll focus on, >> but that's perfectly compatible with there being other evidence on the other side of the scale. >> So I I'm not saying it's a definitive debunking of atheism. I'm I'm just saying that it is one critical indication in our in our range of evidence that is indicative of theism and and if the naturalist wants to maintain their worldview, they'll have to look for an equally powerful line of evidence on the on the other side. >> So, Alex, we've got kind of two stages to that argument. Um I just want to know your thoughts initially on the first stage.
¶16So, do you agree with Miles about the sort of the possible range of values and that sort of thing? Um well it's it's quite complicated. I mean uh it's true that there is um that there are these sort of famous uh parameters in physics like the cosmological constant or >> the like you you see them all over the strength of the weak force and strong force whatever. It feels like well what we want to say is that they're finely tuned because it seems like if you were to vary them even a tiny amount then order and structure sort of breaks down and you know if the gravitational strength was slightly more everything would clump together. If it was slightly less everything would fly apart.
¶17In either of those alternatives does it seem like you could have complex sort of interactions and stuff like that or or life occurring. So that's the kind of um that much fine that's that's fair enough. Um I think it's it gets a little bit more complicated when we ask like um we say all these other alternatives are possible. I mean what exactly do we mean by possible here? We have to be clear about we're talking about an epistemic possibility.
¶18It's not supposed to be some kind of it's not like the universe could in fact configure itself tomorrow and and it might take on a new it's not like metaphysical possibility like that where we think really in the world and something might take place. It's um it's about our level of expectation, right? So we we I can imagine them being different and that's what I mean by it being possible that they could be different and there's a gap there between whether it actually could have been different. I mean just because I can imagine it being different doesn't mean that it actually could be. So it's I guess you know it's it's compatible with the law that these the values that these constants have being necessary.
¶19we would still talk about the possibility of them being different because you know metaphysically necessary but still I can imagine them being different and the idea is that on naturalism it's not so much that there's this big sort of um lottery random number generator or something that just spits out these values it's even if they were necessary the thought would be just given the information of naturalism being true what are your expectations now like in your head about what the values of the constants would be and thought about like that then you know they could have taken can almost any value, right? So there does seem like there's a big range I can imagine that they would take on. So I suppose in that sense I can go along with as long as we're clear about what we're saying. And I think a lot of people >> a lot of people misunderstand and think that >> there's a more implausible claim going on something about like you know the universe randomly picking up these or by chance on naturalism you know like I drop my toast and it just by chance lands with the butter facing down or something and it's as if the gravitational value just by chance landed like that. I don't think anyone's saying that.
¶20It's about the expectation in the epistemic sense of possibility and probability. >> Yes. I mean that's that's exactly right and it's a common misunderstanding. Even if the your hypothesis is that the values of the parameters are just a brute fact with no deeper explanation and they go all the way back to t equals zero to the big bang. There was no cosmic lottery.
¶21It's just they're set from the beginning and there's no deeper explanation for it. It's still the case that we can say that the epistemic probability of life permitting values is extremely low. >> Yeah. uh even given that we're not talking about some sort of stochastic mechanism that sets the values in place like if the initial conditions of the universe were in the shape of a Disney princess for example that the probability of that even given the brute fact hypothesis saying that's just a brute fact well that does nothing to show that the epistemic probability of that isn't extremely low >> um in fact the fact that it takes on this shape might give you very good reason to think it's not just a brute fact >> so I think that's an important clarification Yeah, I don't want to put the c before the horse, but in terms of is that the sort of explanation that you would go for then that this is just a a brief fact. [clears throat] So it does you know in our in our position of knowledge in our epistemic position it looks like it could have been different in multiple ways but actually this is just the way the world is.
¶22Um well I mean in one way I'm not qualified. I'm not a physicist and um I wouldn't like to try and definitively say this here's my you know grand unified theory about how these how these values uh these constants get their values. Um I don't know I'm not qualified to say exactly how that works. On the other hand um I think it's don't want to jump the gun too much. I am going to bring up the Lynford objection already.
¶23I think cuz it's this is my new favorite um uh aspect of this debate. But with my friend Dan Lynford's been slowly bringing me around. I say slowly bringing me around, he's been slowly helping me understand what he's talking about because I'm such an idiot. But um his idea is that fine-tuning is an aspect of physical theories primarily rather than an aspect of the world itself. So in a physicist's sense um a theory is finely tuned if the free parameters of that theory need to be given arbitrarily precise values in order to fit with the observed data that we've got.
¶24So you can have a theory like for instance you got theory of general relativity. Great theory fits loads of the data that we've got. Oops. It doesn't fit the sort of rotation of galaxies out in in intergalactic space or whatever. They're rotating too quickly.
¶25There doesn't seem to be enough gravity in general relativity for that to work. So you have to pile in a bunch of dark energy to explain or dark matter to explain how those interactions are working. If if general relativity is to survive this observation, there needs to be more stuff going on in the background. And that's in a way that's a bit like fine-tuning. We're padding the theory out with something in order to keep the theory, but also to make it fit with the data.
¶26And it's the fine-tuning of say uh cosmological constant or whatever is in we're we're saying that it could have taken lots of different ranges like in theory in in the theory we could have put a different number in but unless we put a number that's within this tiny little range the theory then doesn't predict the stuff that we see >> right and so if you think about it like that >> that means that fine the finetuning of these constants is um a sign that the theory is not correct that it might be on the right lines, but it's not there yet. Because if it was there yet, you wouldn't need to like by hand set the the dial to be this uh this precisely configured, >> at least that would be the the expectation of a physicist. >> So, so is the is this idea that when we have a better scientific theory of you know the deep uh you know nature of physics that fine-tuning won't seem to be a problem? it won't seem to be um coincidental. >> Yeah, I think the dream would be that there wouldn't be fine tuning in this sense.
¶27Then the physicists wouldn't have to go here's my theory. Oops, it doesn't fit with the data unless I tweak this thing. They would say here's my theory. Oh, it fits perfectly with the data. Great.
¶28Don't need to finely tune it now. >> So, the fine tuning would drop out and there just wouldn't be any. It would be a good a good fit. And I guess just one last thing about this is just that what's going on then is that the this fact that you have to finely tune the constants um is an artifact of a bad theory on this view which should it's like a rough edge that should be shaved off. Right?
¶29[snorts] But if on this analysis what's going on with people who put the argument forwards is that they're saying let's interpret the theories as if they're correct like the true model of reality. Now any feature of that theory is a feature of reality as a consequence. So if you've got this finely tuned phenomena that we were just talking about a moment ago, you interpret that as being in the world and something that in the world needs to be explained. What explains that? Oh, it must have been that somebody did that blah blah blah.
¶30And we get into the the whole debate that we're talking about now. So the great thing about this objection is it's a kind of gestalt shift that takes you out of you. Yes, I agree there's fine tuning, but it's different. I kind of I'm seeing it now as a duck rather than a rabbit. So it's um it's a whole new way of looking at which I think is fantastic.
¶31Yeah. >> Yeah. That's fascinating. Miles, what do you make of it? >> Well, so the way that Dan draws the distinction here is he says that there's fine-tuning in the physicist sense and there's finetuning in the philosopher sense.
¶32In the physicist sense, it's fine-tuning of the theory and its parameters. In the philosopher sense, it's fine-tuning in the universe itself, in the actual laws of nature that obtain. Now, I don't like that way of drawing the distinction. I think that's tendentious. I think it it it prejudices our perception of what the answers are because I think many many physicists think that the universe itself and its laws are fine-tuned.
¶33Um the if you think that fine-tuning is a brute fact or if you appeal to the multiverse then you are going to think that the universe itself is fine-tuned for life rather than thinking that this is an artifact of our theories of physics that need to be replaced by deeper physics. Phil Halper recently had a survey of 1,700 different physicists and a majority of them affirmed views according to which the universe itself is fine-tuned for life. So that doesn't mean it's true. It's just to say that we the question is there is on the one hand fine-tuning in our theories and there's fine-tuning in the universe and is the former evidence for the latter and we shouldn't prejudice our answers to those questions as as construing one of them as like the physicist's answer and the other as the the hapless philosophers. Um, so that that would just be a first terminological point.
¶34But I think one thing I'm curious about, this isn't a definitive objection, but but I'm unsure about is like it seems like Dan's methodology here would imply that we could never conclude that the universe itself is fine-tuned for life. Like it seems like his methodological recommendation would always tell you we got to replace the theory. It's fine-tuned. Well, we got to we got to appeal to an even deeper theory. And >> if the universe were in fact fine-tuned in its fundamental parameters, >> we could never discover it.
¶35>> So there there might be a way out of that. But that worries me. It it seems to rule out of court like the possibility of of an actual fine-tuned universe. >> Yeah. But that cuts the other way as well, doesn't it?
¶36Where if you want to say like you can never really eliminate the possibility that the fine-tuning is just an artifact of a bad theory. Like how do you ever get to that point where you say, "No, it isn't the artifact of a bad theory. actually in the world. There's just basically a gap there. And it's hard to see how in either direction you could ever really close that gap.
¶37>> Well, I mean, if you if you had a a theory of deeper physics, if you brought it to our attention and and to to our display, then we could consider it and and compare it and what it predicts about the data. Um, so I don't think there's anything about like there there comes a point at which you like end the inquiry into the deeper into all possible explanations and you say, "Okay, these are the ones I can think of and let's let's compare them." >> Um, but that's just going to implicate like any inductive inference, right? At some point you you just call it and you say, "Let's assess the options." >> But I'm perfectly happy if somebody has a um an actual deeper physical explanation to offer and then we can we can assess it. Um, certainly it would be premature to like appeal to God before you've even surveyed the possible physical explanations for it, but I'm not saying appeal to God whenever there is fine-tuning just period. It's after a principal investigation where it seems like Dan what Dan is saying is appeal to deeper physics automatically.
¶38And that I think I that that just seems to rule out the possibility that our universe is is fine-tuned. So just to clarify when our friend Phil did that survey is was it the majority of of physicists who are saying that finetuning is an actual part of the world and not just sort of a part of their theories? >> Well, so if I recall it was something like 11% explicitly said their their resolution to it was uh appeal to a deeper principle. It's not clear from the wording whether that encompasses all of like what could be called deeper physics, >> but it was only 11%. And then it was something like 20 23% think it's just a brute fact, which just is to say the universe has these features and that's it.
¶39Another 20% say it's the multiverse, which is in a sense a deeper physical explanation, but it's one that agrees that the universe has these actual features that are fine-tuned. >> Um, and then 11% say intelligent design. So to me, I I look at that and I say, "Okay, so at least half think that fine-tuning is is robust and real." >> Again, that's not to give an argument for thinking that it is. It's just to say that we should label these correctly rather than say, "Well, this is the physicists and this is the philosophers." >> So, having looked at stage one of the argument, Alex, why don't you consider stage two good evidence for the existence of God? >> Well, I'm a skeptic of the argument, as you as [clears throat] you might predicted.
¶40Um, so I guess there's a couple of things that we might want to go into. Let's I guess first of all, should we go into the divine psychology objection? >> Good. >> Um, >> that back over. >> So, one way to think about it is that we've got two parts of this going on where one part says um that the fine-tuning is like conditional on theism is is quite likely and then the other one says fine-tuning conditional on naturalism is is unlikely.
¶41You've got this kind of high probability premise and a low probability premise. Have I muddled the base factor around in that? That's >> Yeah, I think you're right. The high the what what is called the high probability premise is just the the likelihood of fine-tuning on theism is not that small. >> Yeah.
¶42>> Whereas the low probability one is on naturalism is very small. >> Right. So this is a convenient way to split up the kind of objections. And it's like um I was thinking about this on the train up here. It's almost like um because we've got these two halves of it.
¶43Um, Miles needs both of them to go through in order for the argument to work. >> Um, so it's almost like we're playing two games of chess simultaneously and Miles needs to win both games of chess otherwise his argument isn't going to work. I don't need to win either. I only need to draw either of them for for for my job to be done, right? So, it's like um that that sort of sets up the dynamic.
¶44It's quite a hard uh job then if we set it up like that. I'm trying to make it easier for myself here. Strategy. Um, but yeah, let's focus in first of all. So the thought would be like look fine-tuning wouldn't be uh a low probability wouldn't be unexpected uh conditional on theism.
¶45So here's uh one way that you might undermine that uh thought right. Well I think first of all as as you said just a moment ago the basic picture would be something like look God is good and God would want good things right and it's good if the universe can sustain life. So that's why we think it's not unlikely if God existed. Okay. So, I've got to do something to undermine that's like the opening move of the chess game.
¶46I've got to respond with with my own moves now as a consequence of that first move, right? So, um one way that you might start to go about this is to say, well, um who knows what God would want, right? God's psychology is kind of private and hidden away from me. And for all I know, there might be a creator of the universe, but he might have had other things in mind than this. And so, how do I know?
¶47And this is familiar to people in say for instance the um problem of evil where sometimes theists will appeal to skeptical theism. This a name for an approach to that problem where you say something like look uh the evidence of evil and suffering in the world doesn't count against the um the hypothesis that God exists. It's not exactly the sort of thing I'd expect if there was a good God. But my way out of that is to say well I just don't know what God would do. Right?
¶48his motives are hidden behind this radical otherness or something that's separates from this divine mind. So I can't really tell you how what he would be thinking or what his motivations would be. Okay. So if we take that line on the problem of evil, the naturalist can say something very similar here when it comes to the fine tune. in a problem of evil and problem fine-tuning argument are kind of like um almost like mirror images of one another because lots of the time the considerations that that theists will bring into play with the fine-tuning argument will be the same sorts of things that naturalists will bring into play with the problem of evil.
¶49So >> um [clears throat] so this is this is a line you could take. Um maybe that's enough to motivate the the way the objection is supposed to run. I'm basically saying how do you know what would be expected if God were to exist? >> Yeah. So I think to answer the question directly, the the basis of my conjecture about divine psychology of saying God would not be all that unlikely to design a universe for life is reflection upon God's being perfectly good.
¶50I think that is the only attribute of God so defined that allows you to make principled inferences about God's likely behavior. You're not going to get it from omnipotence or omniscience and in fact those are just going to inflate the possibilities under theism. If God is all powerful, he can do anything metaphysically possible. But you can gain traction from God's being perfectly good. I to me at a certain level, I think it's just kind of self-evident that God's being perfectly good, morally perfect, perfectly loving mean that he is sensitive to axiological considerations or value based considerations.
¶51The more good a state of affair is, the more beautiful a state of affairs is, the more likely God is to actualize it. And it's it's an intuition that underwrites the problem of evil as you say, the problem of divine hiddenness. You know, if God is perfectly loving, why is he so hidden from people when they seek him? It underwrites the problem of no best world, which is another argument for atheism that if God exists, uh the world should be the best possible world. God is the greatest possible being and he has the power to actualize it.
¶52So why is the world not the best possible world? I I agree with that base level intuition. And so that is the the answer to your question is okay, how do we make these inferences? Well, it's it's because go the the attribute God being perfectly loving needs to mean something. It it can't just be empty.
¶53Um and so if it means anything like our common conception of of good, then I think modest inferences about God's preference for good ends is warranted. And you might say, well, how do you get to life? Well, conscious agents, people are a prerequisite for any kind of moral value whatsoever. They're not just one among many in a long list. You can't have love or peace or joy or patience, camaraderie, relationships without people.
¶54And so, I think that puts them in a category unto themselves. There there's sort of a foundational kind of value. So that if you're just thinking about what goods is God likely to bring about. Well, if all moral value itself requires people to be in existence, then I think you can expect that to to obtain. And then your your second point was okay.
¶55Well, what what about skeptical theism? I agree with you about the vast majority of skeptical theistic arguments are inconsistent with natural theology and with the fine-tuning argument, which if uh viewers are interested in thinking about that more, they can take a look at the paper. skeptical theism undermines the fine-tuning argument mostly written by me. And so I agree with you entirely that the the two the two research programs are inconsistent with one another. But that's why I'm not a skeptical theist.
¶56Uh I think that at least the canonical formulation of it. It's a very extreme kind of agnosticism that it advocates about God's inclinations with respect to evil. And the way I'd respond to that would be the same way I would respond to the divine psychology objection or one of the ways which is to appeal to kind of extreme thought experiments which I think bring out the implausibility of that stated agnosticism. I mean, it seems to me the machinery of skeptical theism has the implication that if the entire universe were filled with um an infinite number of people experiencing endless excruciating torment, we still couldn't say that this observation is evidence against the existence of God. And I think well surely surely it would be.
¶57So unless there's an asymmetry here, unless the skeptical theist can tell us why that inference wouldn't be warranted, but in our everyday cases of evil it is. absent that kind of symmetry breaker, I think the the skeptical theistic machinery just doesn't work. Um, and then the flip side of that is uh when we encounter certain positive lines of evidence for God hypothetically like on on Substack, there's been a lot of debate these days about uh Catholic miracle claims. Now, of all of the these are historical instances which are apparently of very clear cases of miraculous healings about someone, for example, having their their leg um regrown or reattached two years after it was amputated >> in one night. They woke up and they had two legs again.
¶58Okay, imagine that actually happened. I mean, of all of the responses to the that debate, nobody has said, "Well, even if this did happen, it wouldn't be any evidence for God at all." that that is quite a radical claim I think. So that would be my first response is it seems like there's no limiting principle on this skepticism about divine psychology and that that makes it implausible. So I don't know. I mean do you do you think that um would you agree with with that point that divine psychology skepticism is is just unlimited or would you say no there's some differences between that and fine-tuning or something like that?
¶59Well, I think proponents of of skeptical theism would would want to reject that idea that is sort of an unlimited or or um yeah, >> I mean the sort of standard reply to the skeptical theist is to say something like well that's ushering in this epistemological sort of morass that you're in because how can you know anything if if you can't know this type of stuff and uh supposedly it brings about this sort of skeptical >> uh problem and they want to push back and say well it doesn't it's just a limited form of skepticism. about these things but not about everything or whatever. Anyway, um that's that's fine. I think what I'm more interested in pushing back on though is um >> so let's think about so you said that the the way this would work would be that God's goodness would um provide some expectation that he would make creatures like us because we have value and we are valuable creatures. That would be the idea.
¶60>> Yeah. >> Good. So um going down this line, I was thinking about this on the train on the way down. So I think there's a couple of like points to to bring up if only to to see what your response is to them. I mean so first of all there's there's one thought which is like let's say that that's all true and this is a valuable state of affairs and God's good and and he you know does provide a reason to think that he would make this.
¶61It's at least not wildly unexpected that he would bring something like this about. Um because remember what all we need to do is establish the the ratio which was we haven't really talked about the low probability part of it yet but you don't need to make it super uh high probability only needs to overcome the very low probability of naturalism for it to sort of favor theism. So all you need to do is motivate that it's not massively unlikely uh at this point anyway until we address the the second part. Um, so here here's a thought anyway, which is that like it might be so God God's good and that provides some reason to think that he would bring about some state of affairs that's good. But now think about it that there are lots of different good states of affairs.
¶62>> And um it's not clear to me that uh moral goodness is by definition or something going to override other considerations of of value that you might have. for instances you might want to um consider aesthetic value or just um something about like like God might want to make a beautiful universe according to his criteria of beauty and that might not involve >> hideous uh murderous creatures like us in there right if if he was so inclined he wouldn't make a world like this he could still be perfectly good perfectly loving but all knowing everything like that he could just pick uh that aesthetic value rather than this say moral value whatever it was and I think that like it's hard I I I think it's plausible at the very least to consider those two types of things as >> both being good and neither of them being obligatory so like for instance it's it's good to become a doctor it's good to become a fireman right I'm not like doing something wrong if I pick one because yeah if I pick being a doctor instead of a fireman I'm not doing something wrong it's like either of them are superogatory I think is the term right either of them is a is allowable and they're both good. And like God might have just said, you know, I just feel like um an empty but aesthetically beautiful universe. And if he had done that, I don't think that that clashes with his goodness or with his all knowing nature or even maybe with his loving nature. I'm not sure why.
¶63It just seems like he could have done that. And now let's ask, well, how many alternative sort of values might he have chosen to instantiate that are compatible with his goodness? I don't know what how there could be a limit on that. I can't think of my puny brain can only think of a diff couple of different types of value, but presumably God may have a, you know, an infinite range of different exotic types of value that he could pick. And moral creatures like us might be an insignificant fraction of that total.
¶64It might be half of it. It might be 90% of it. We just don't know. >> And so that's a way of motivating the skeptical theism coming back in again because it's like, couldn't God just choose to instantiate? I mean, if those are the conditions you want me to satisfy, his goodness, his all knowingness, that type of thing, couldn't I satisfy them in almost an infinite number of cases, an unknown percentage of which involves creatures like us?
¶65>> And if that's right, then there's skeptical theism again because we've got this like inscrable probability or proportionality of the range. Yeah. So, yeah. >> Well, a couple of thoughts. The first is that I I just deny this extreme value skepticism that skeptical theists often propound, which is our like total ignorance about the range of possible goods or values.
¶66I I just I think that's unmotivated. I I don't see any reason to think any way that we have such a limited grasp on possible goods, at least in the the very broad categories of what there could be. Um, but more substantively, I I think that's why the point I made about conscious agents being foundational and a prerequisite of any kind of moral value is very very important because now it's not saying that people or or agents are just one value among others. It's saying any moral moral value at all if God wants to realize it in the universe will have to involve agents. And so that gives them a much much greater share of the the probability space than any just like randomly selected aesthetic good.
¶67But the really fundamental point I think is that the constants and the initial conditions of physics are not just fine-tuned for life. I think that's shorthand. They're fine-tuned for anything of value at all. So if God wants to create a universe of beautiful structures and endless grand canyons, the constants and the parameters more generally have to fall into the value permitting range. the the range of values that permits value is co-extensive with the range that permits life.
¶68So I think that advocating that more expansive idea of of what kind of things God could realize. Okay, if he wants a beautiful universe of anything more than just hydrogen gas, it's going to have to be a fine-tuned one. So that I mean we can just talk about that one. That one would be my main line of response. Well, I guess this takes us to whether you know we have this um island, what's the term the island of transparency or something where we can see just around the we've got the actual world and then we we can sort of understand if we what's the phrase the >> well that I'm Collins uh the epistemically illuminated.
¶69>> There you go. Thank you. Yes, the epistemically illuminated region. So we can kind of tell what the actual world is like and like close by possible worlds. You can sort of understand them by thinking if I tweaked the you know strength of gravity a little bit everything would clump together.
¶70Yes. >> Um >> but yeah what about all these exotic combinations? I mean what if I tweak gravity this much and the cosmological constant that much spin the dials? Is there no island of stability off out there in the beyond the horizon that I can see? Maybe maybe there is.
¶71I don't know. Uh but I find it rather like strange to think that like every value like it seems like a too strong a claim to say that not just moral value but like even value aesthetic value like manifesting some kind of mathematical symmetry or whatever couldn't be done unless all the the physical constants were tweaked in exactly the way they are in the agile. That's quite that seems too strong to me. And I can imagine it would be inhospitable to life, but there might be some strange exotic uh manifestation of force. It wouldn't be atoms, but the forces might come together in some other way and display something that God found valuable because it was aesthetically pleasing to him for some weird property of of aesthetics that he's got that we can't understand.
¶72Yeah. Um, I mean, I am speculating that there's these other other >> value properties that that I can't really put my finger on. Yeah. >> Um, but it just seems to me that we don't know if that's true or or not. So, all I need to, like I said before, all I need to do is draw this game of chess.
¶73I don't actually need to win it. So, I feel I feel like if I can just like >> take us to a point where neither of us knows what's going on, then that's that's probably enough, right? And yeah, at this point I feel like I we are we just speculating about whether there could be the manifestation of some obscure aesthetic value in a very exotic configuration of physics. I mean, if you're going to tell me that you know that couldn't be the case, I think that's too strong. >> No, I but I think what you're envisioning is just a very low likelihood of obtaining in in parameter space.
¶74I mean, there are a couple of issues here. If you're in the case of the cosmological constant for example, if we're holding fixed the other values of the parameters and we can discuss what happens if you vary them um too much variation up or down in the cosmological constant gives you a universe that almost immediately rips apart or collapses in on itself after 5 seconds. If it were anywhere near its theoretically like maximum value in 10 the 43 seconds the universe collapses into nothing. So you don't you don't get anything. I mean, you could you could set back and go, but maybe, but I I think just realistically speaking, it's pretty clear that nothing's going to happen in that case.
¶75Once you start varying multiple parameters, it's more complicated. If you if you vary Q uniformity and the cosmological constant at the same time, it's it's a it's a broader window, but it's still a narrow window relative to the whole range. And so the point would be that we don't need to make a claim about the fact that only these values that we have are the ones that realize value in the whole like 31 dimensional parameter space. There's 31 parameters in fundamental physics and the idea is if you want to see how rare life permitting or value permitting values are, you have to vary all of them at once. And so you have this 32dimensional parameter space of possibilities which we can't visualize obviously.
¶76And so then the question is, well, how rare are value permitting ones? Well, I don't think that kind of a study's ever been carried out. But but that's why I think Robin Collins's point about the epistemically illuminated range is pivotal. His point is that we narrow the focus onto those range of values for which we can determine the consequences. This is the illuminated range, the epistemically illuminated range where we can tell what happens.
¶77And then the point will be we should formulate the fine-tuning argument like this. Given that the parameters fall in the epistemically illuminated range, how likely is it that they would fall into the value permitting range under naturalism and theism? So that allows us to narrow our focus and narrow the scope down to a tractable range of values which we have explored and seen that in all likelihood there's nothing but hydrogen gas too far out for example. >> Okay, good. So um let let me move on to another point then.
¶78I mean we could keep talking about that but let me try another angle which would be something like >> sure maybe I will again start off by granting you that uh uh moral agents like us are valuable and God is good that means it would be likely to make something like gives you reason to think anyway that he might do something like that. Um, but it does seem to me one one way you could go would be to say uh you also need like it's an incomplete description because um like what's a good analogy for this? I might um I have like I have reason to let's say stay up all night playing computer games, right? Because it's fun. And you know, there you go.
¶79There's my reason for for thinking I might do that. On the other hand, um I I also have reason to not do that because I need to get up in the morning and get on a train and come to London for a fine tuning debate instead. And this is not autobiographical. It's just a an example I plucked uh from my from thin air. Yeah.
¶80Um [laughter] but uh yeah. So so you can just see that like I even if there is reason to stay up, I might that might be counterbalanced by something which is a reason to not stay up, right? So I could grant you there is reason to stay up still you shouldn't do that. Yeah. >> Right.
¶81And God might think to himself, you know, embodied moral agents, they are good. Also, they're terrible to each other and they rip each other to pieces and they often lie and cheat and blah blah blah. And you know what? It would just be better on balance to not bring them about because they are deprived horrendous creatures and maybe it would just be better if I just like only made angels or just left it to just being me because I'm perfect or something. So you I think it's like an incomplete description of it just to go, "Well, we're good.
¶82So that means that he's got reason to create us because what about all the other side of the coin? Are there no bad sides to us as well? And don't they weigh down the reason? Maybe they overcome the reason and make it so that he's got reason all things considered to not create us. Right.
¶83And don't you have to tell me something about that the other side of that equation as well. Not just the good side, but the bad side. >> Yeah. Well, I mean, I would say the fact that you have some reason to, you know, stay up and play video games means that it's not terribly unlikely that [snorts] you would you would play video games. It's probably less likely than going and doing the right thing as as I'm sure you did, which is, you know, get a good night's sleep and then come here.
¶84Um, and so I I think that that illustrates the point that we don't have to say God would be likely to do these things. um we can think that it's it's very very unlikely on the basis of our survey of the reasons that God would do these things. It just needs to be more likely than these things happening than the constants falling into the life permitting range by chance. And so to really motivate a kind of comparable skepticism, you would have to say that there's a 10 to the 90 range of possible reasons God might have, the vast majority of which would lead him out of uh fine-tuning the universe for life. And and I just I think that's unmotivated.
¶85I mean your point about the negative consequences of creating agents is well taken. But I think to fully assess that you would need to ask whether or not like agents in the world that we observe are like on balance negative. You know, have have over human history have we behaved so terribly to each other and done such awful things that actually it's a net negative. I mean, and then you're just in the problem of evil, and that's a much more complicated conversation. But, but I would also say that from the vantage point of an omnipotent, omnisient, perfectly good God.
¶86I don't think it's terribly unlikely that such a being would decide to create agents because they would have the power to intervene if uh the state of affairs started to spiral out of control, right? It wouldn't just be where they're trying to decide, they're clicking a button, hitting a button on what to do, and then they have to take a hands-off approach. So, in terms of calculating like independently of our actual observations of evil, just calculating how likely is it that God would uh create agents even if it could go off the rails, it doesn't seem to be that unlikely because this agent is all powerful and has compensating >> mechanisms in place. I mean, I guess like where I think this comparison between the theories is going to go ultimately is going to be something about theism is is a um a simpler hypothesis than than I mean it's jumping the gun a little bit, but um than some purported naturalist alternative. >> Sure.
¶87Um, I mean, we'll get there, but but just to put the flag in the ground or something at this point, like you can um it seems to me what you're doing is increasing the complexity of the hypothesis to some extent to get around these problems because like if creating moral agents isn't just good, but also bad. And the way of like brushing off the badness is to say something like, well, you know, now he's an interventionist god and maybe they're blah blah blah. Like we're it's not just this perfectly simple case. You're adding in more and more. and and and that sort of weighs down the intrinsic probability of the hypothesis.
¶88I'm not saying that's disastrous or it's game over or anything at this point, but just to note that every time you uh someone in your position were to modify the theory in such a way to make it fit now with the with the objection that's been brought up that that that type of move brings down the intrinsic probability of it because it just makes it more likely that it's not. I mean, what if God isn't an interventionist God in some way then it would be false? Yeah, maybe we can have a final response and then we can move on to another objection. >> Well, I would just say that uh I don't think that these considerations show that it's terribly unlikely that God could create agents because agents could then do bad things because a God who's omnisient I think also has like what's called hypothetical knowledge or middle knowledge knowing what every free agent would do if created. And so you could expect that were an agent like that to actualize a world with agents, it would be one where the history that results is a net positive or is above some threshold of value or is not so awful as to merit not being created.
¶89So if you really want to carry that objection, you either have to say that there's just no feasible world like that available to God or that when we look into the actual world, we can see that our world is not that. The second one is the problem of evil, which we could talk about. And the first one I think is just an extraordinary claim that that all worlds available for God are ones where agents uh yeah cannot overcome the disvalue they contribute to make it a worthwhile project. I think there's a more general issue with talking about um the prior probability of theism. Is it a contrived hypothesis and maybe but I don't think it is in the way you're intending here.
¶90I don't think you have to tack on like interventionist policies. I I think um it's not enough to gesture at the possibility of things going so poorly. You have to defend one one of two of those claims to undercut the point. >> Well, I mean, if I heard you right, you appealed to to Mullenism there as a as you know, God having middle knowledge and being able to see what free creatures would would do. And that strikes me as just another very implausible add-on to uh theism.
¶91Molinism brings massively in my estimation massively brings down the the intrinsic probability because Mullinism is basically incoherent in my view. I don't you know that doesn't help me get to get on board with fine tuning if you say and also you have to buy mullenism now like that I'm just thinking this getting worse and worse is from my point of view there. >> So I think if mullenism I mean we I don't even have to get into defending it. If mullanism is incoherent then it does not follow that God is has middle knowledge. I I I say that it follows from God's omniscience.
¶92God is all knowing. If it's coherent and possible it just follows by definition that God has middle knowledge. But if it's an incoherent concept, fine. Then we have to imagine God, so to speak, thinking prior to designing the universe. You know, I don't know what is going to happen once I decide to create these agents in this world.
¶93I'll find out as I do. Um, and at that point, I don't think the added stipulation that God would intervene to prevent significant extravagant evil is an added expense to the theory because I think it just follows from the assumptions of the theory. it's not an add-on that you you tack on. Rather, I think that itself just follows from God's being perfectly good, that he wouldn't let things get so uh derailed that it's no longer a valuable enterprise. Um, but I also think that middle knowledge is coherent and elegant, and that it's not an added stipulation.
¶94It follows from omniscience. But you could still say that the original like triom omni package is improbable or or oversp specified and then we could talk about that. H Alex, I do want to ask you about your stalking horse objection >> because I've heard of a straw man. I haven't heard of a stalking horse. What is what is going on with this objection?
¶95Well, um a stalking horse is a term from politics, right? It's when somebody runs uh like you might like Andy Burnham basically just became the prime minister and he was unchallenged when he ran when Kharma stood down. But sometimes what you'll get in a situation like that is that like if they represent say the the left of the party then like the right of the party will put somebody up to run against them if only to have a show of competition, right? It's like a >> and there's different ways that you can do this. Sometimes it can be contrived like in Russia where you pretend that there's an election really going on and actually it's just Putin and no one else could win.
¶96Or it could be something where it's like um it's it serves some other political motive basically like toate the left or something whatever. Anyway, so there's this idea of a stalking horse which is a kind of someone who's running in an election against somebody but it's not they're not a proper candidate that there doing it for some other purpose, right? And it it also I mean the phrase >> it's a it is a little bit like a straw man but it's like it's like a straw man >> a proxy. A straw man is like a term for it's like a fallacy where you're saying there's something wrong with what somebody's doing because they are >> constring the opponent's position in the worst possible way and that's sort of intellectually a bad thing to do. There's nothing necessarily bad about a stalking horse.
¶97I mean it's serving some purpose or whatever but that doesn't mean that it's a fallacy or it's it's you know it is I think different from straw man in that sense. Um, and it goes back to like the political usage as well is at least the one that was familiar to me when I thought about it in the first place. But the term itself goes back to like hunting where you would have like a picture of a horse or something and that would aid somehow in corelling the animal in the right way. So it's like a um it's but the meaning is the same in that case. It's a sort of facade that's playing the role of something.
¶98Um anyway, so that's hopefully enough ethmology to explain [laughter] the background of >> they're like okay and now God how we >> where are we gone where are we going >> yeah what is so what is the stalking horse in this in this context >> okay so then that would be to move away now we've talked about whether or not the probability is high on theism that you'd have a life finely tuned life permitting universe like this now talking really kicks in when we're thinking about the low probability premise which would saying that uh the probability of a life permitting universe like this on naturalism would be low. So the stalking horse hypothesis in this context then works like this. Um you could start off by by seeing that there are different versions of theism and naturalism that there are kind of families of hypothes more precise hypotheses that sort of live underneath them. So for instance, you might have uh with theism, maybe bare theism or something like that just says there's a creator of the universe and then a more padded out version of theism would be to say uh there's a creator of the universe who's omnisient and omnipotent and omnibenevolvent. Right?
¶99So it's like adding more specificity to the hypothesis. And what happens is as your hypothesis becomes more complex, it allows you to it sort of drives expectations of certain things up and other things down because it's a more precise and more specific thing, right? And so if you think about it just if I say there's a designer or a creator of the universe, what's the universe like now? What do you think it's going to be like? You basically don't have enough information to say what the universe is going to be like because it might be a bad creator.
¶100It might be a good creator. It might be an incompetent creator. It might be a competent creator. Whatever. You don't know.
¶101I just told you that there's a creator and it doesn't really drive any expectations about what the world would be like if I say that. And similarly, if you just say to me there's no creator, there's just nature. Now, what do you think the universe is going to be like? I don't know. Like, it could be like anything, couldn't it?
¶102Cuz it there's loads of different ways that uh that nature could be. So, I don't know. >> Now, what's going on, it seems to me, is that >> theist doesn't want to just posit bare theism. It doesn't really give you any expectations for anything. And what they do is posit a theism like typically omni theism.
¶103Um and that drives some expectations. Now sudden things are more expected, some things are less expected. Maybe complexity and moral uh the the ability to make moral choices becomes more likely, but animal suffering and stuff like that becomes less expected. So you got this kind of balance. At least now the there's an uneven probability distribution over all these different possibilities.
¶104Um great. But if we're not doing the same thing with naturalism, if we just leave that as like bare naturalism where we don't say anything about that, it's just naturalism just means there is no creator of the universe, figure it out right from that alone, then it's like comparing apples to oranges because obviously one of them is generating expectations because it's a more specified complex hypothesis and the other one is not generating uh expectations merely because it's so simple, right? And then it's no surprise, right, if this hypothesis can fit the data better than this one because this one doesn't really tell you anything about the hypo uh the evidence whereas this one at least does make a stake, right? So there'll be some more specific version of theism that fits whatever data you want better than just bare naturalism. Or we could flip it around and I say here's a version of naturalism that's padded out with a physical theory and has interpreted all these parameters and blah blah blah.
¶105That's what I mean by naturalism. But what I mean by theism is just there's a creator of the universe and I don't say what that creator is like. Now it's not going to be a surprise if my theory of naturalism fits some data better because at least it's driving some expectations now because it's specific. Whereas the theism thing doesn't generate any expectations. So it it, you know, if that's what we mean by winning this debate, it sort of just means like I'm stacking the odds by picking a hypothesis that looks like it's more likely to fit the data against one that's sort of too bland to generate any expectations, right?
¶106No, no one should be impressed with that type of comparison. But then what we want to do is compare theories that are equivalent to one another in in specificity or something. Um but then if we do that and you think it through it seems to me that like well this is one way of thinking about it anyway is that if they're exactly the same then they're going to drive the same expectations and then neither of them will will win. It would be a draw because if if I make you know some naturalistic and this is where it becomes a sort of stalking horse if you start off by telling me what you mean by theism. I'll find out of the range of possible naturalisms one that matches the data as well as your version of theism does.
¶107So like Andy Burnham running for prime minister. I'll just find a candidate that's just as good with the Labor uh voters or whatever so that it will be a draw when they vote and I'll always be able to find one that matches the data as well as your version of theism. At least that's the thought. So if that was right, then you can never really win this race. There'll always be another candidate that's just as good.
¶108And that's the sort of basic idea of the stalking horse hypothesis. >> Um Alex, I want to ask you about what you've sometimes referred to as an enriched naturalism. this kind of naturalism 2.0 or a kind of you know padded naturalism. What what sort of naturalisms do you think could account for fine-tuning or be a competitor to theism? >> Yeah.
¶109So like in a general sense and this probably won't be very satisfying but like if you think about it in terms I was as I was saying before if you start off with bare theism just being this claim that there's a creator of the universe what we have to add to that for it to start driving expectations is saying something about their psychology. What do they want right? If they want universes like this, great. That means the universe is like this are suddenly much more likely. Um, and so that's how you drive the expectations by adding in something about their intentions.
¶110[clears throat] Now, you can't really add in intention. You'd have to do quite a lot of fiddly work with what you mean by intention if you want to add that into naturalism because typically the natural world is non-intentional. It doesn't have a mind. It's not trying to do anything in particular. It's it's just the way that it is.
¶111So I I can't do exactly the same move and say, well, let's just say that nature wants there to be life like this. >> Does Thomas Nagel do that sort of? >> Well, it's teological. It's kind of similar. It's not intention in the same sense that we're talking about here.
¶112Uh he's aiming towards something. >> Teology without intention. >> Yeah. Without the mental aspect of the intentionality. But but this is basically what I would what I would say is something like that.
¶113You you could so the way I've talked about before is having like a disposition. So disposition is a purely mechanistic idea. So like this glass is fragile. That means that it's got a disposition to smash under certain circumstances. Like if I was just to knock it off the floor now, it would probably smash or it would manifest its disposition of fragility by breaking under those circumstances.
¶114So you think about a disposition being something. It's a bit like an intention. It's sort of directed in certain to certain circumstances towards doing something. Um so it's a kind of mechanistic equivalent to some extent of of an intention. So you could say something like well this just suppose that nature has as part like we did with theism we added in something about the divine psychology I'll pad out my naturalism hypothesis at least to the extent that I say there's some kind of disposition towards it manifesting these sorts of conditions if you ask me more specifically about that I mean I'm not a physicist I'm not in the business of actually cooking up proper models of how things go but there is you know for instance Lee Smolen is a is a cosmologist who has this idea and I'm not saying I'm advocating for this in particular here but he has this idea where um and I you know forgive me Lee forgive me uh but the idea is something like you know there are these stuff falls into black holes and then what's happening in the when the stuff goes into the black holes is comes out the other side somewhere and it makes making a new universe basically and that as everything is forced through them what pops out in the other side might be a kind of like slight modification of the laws and stuff that was in the original universe where the black hole lived.
¶115It's like an evolutionary process where there's a kind of like mutation or like change and variation as you go through stuff going through various black holes over and over again. You can imagine that if there's some slight dispositional tendency towards maybe there's some dispositional tendency towards certain types of uh universes over time with enough stuff dribbling through these black holes on mass. You know, it's basically a multiverse theory. There's certain weird type of multiverse theory. But there might be like some evolutionary kind of pseudo evolutionary explanation of how these um constants or whatever how it becomes sort of life permitting over time.
¶116Like the first trillion instances of this may not have worked properly but it was slowly gradually getting its way towards here because there was a blind mechanistic disposition just like in evolution that would maybe drive organisms towards certain types of complexity. So, so you can say something like that. Like I don't need to say anything in particular, but >> it's to illustrate the point. It would be something like that that I have in mind. >> Well, yes.
¶117Well, I look at the stalking horse maneuver in this context like I would the defense team in a in a murder trial where the evidence is stacked against the defendant. And the defense team replies, "No, no, no. This isn't evidence that the defendant is guilty. This is evidence that he was framed. Because if he was framed then the likelihood of this evidence is quite high.
¶118That is to say the framed version of the guilty hypothesis the of the innocence hypothesis innocence enriched if you will um predicts the data quite well and that is true. But the reason we reject that is that the intrinsic probability of being of the framed hypothesis itself is so extremely low that the total like probabilistic contribution of the of the uh framed hypothesis is extremely low to the overall more general guilt hypo or innocence hypothesis. Um and so I think the exact same thing happens in this case. It's true that the likelihood of a life permitting universe given what I just call theism but what you call enriched theism and enriched naturalism is roughly the same by design right there it's it's it's the same amount but the problem is that the intrinsic probability of enriched naturalism is extremely low and then I would deny that the intrinsic probability of omnitheism is extremely low. So the first part of that claim is that the the probability itself of this enriched naturalism this mechanism this disposition towards light permitting values the epistemic probability of that is very very low.
¶119Um and the reason for that is that for any value of the parameters that is epistemically possible in this huge range you can come up with a version of enriched naturalism which predicts exactly those values. And so you have 10, for example, in the case of the cosmological constant, you have 10 to the 90 different versions of this enriched naturalism hypothesis. And so it's true if you zero in on that one that predicts life permitting values, its likelihood, the likelihood of fine-tuning for life given that version of it is high, but its prior probability is one part in 10 to the 90. So the total contribution, you multiply the likelihood by the prior probability to get how much it contributes to the total likelihood under naturalism more generally. It's basically zero.
¶120So it does nothing to shift around the total expectedness of life permitting values under naturalism. But then I deny that you can make the corresponding move with theism. It seems to me that and I've said this before to you so I'm sure we'll talk about it that theism posits omni or unlimited properties of God. God has all power, all knowledge and all goodness morally perfect. And that means that it's simple and more theoretically virtuous in a way that all of these may be quasi theistic hypotheses are not those that ascribe a limited amount of power, goodness or knowledge to God.
¶121And here I'll give Brian Cutter and um Joe Schmid's example of the hypothesis consider the hypothesis that the laws of nature apply uniformly throughout the universe. This is analogous to omnitheism where God has all power, all knowledge and so on. But compare that to the hypothesis that the laws of nature apply everywhere in the universe except for one cubic foot in the Andromeda galaxy, the anomalous patch hypothesis. We all reject that as far far less intrinsically likely than does uh than the uniformity hypothesis because it's not both of those predict our data equally well. We've never been to that one square foot in the Andromeda galaxy, but we still reject it because we regard the intrinsic probability of it as so low.
¶122There's there's a uniformity of a hypothesis elevates its intrinsic probability considerably. And so I would say that there's no parallel here between enriched naturalism and enriched theism. The the omnithesism gets a much higher share of the probability space under the design hypothesis more generally in a way that enriched naturalism does not. So do you think the probability uh that Smolen's view is 1 in 10 the 90? Well, I think that for one thing, the um scenario is pretty widely regarded as false because on Smolan's cosmology, the black hole production does not actually select for life permitting universes, but rather for black hole producing universes.
¶123And the most efficient universes is at doing that are ones that develop black holes early, not as a result of planet formation and star formation, long-term evolution that then become black holes. But the universes that produce black holes at the beginning are ones that aren't lifepermitting. That's where you you change the density of matter so much that things collapse into black holes immediately. So that critique is right. It's just it it weeds out lifemitting universes as the cosmological scheme goes on.
¶124But I I I grant your point that let's say that wasn't the case. Um it probably wouldn't be right to identify the prior probability of that scenario precisely with the range of the life permitting range say among the total possible range of parameter values because it's not totally certain that our underlying theories in physics are correct. So that's where I want to concede to the kind of deeper physics issue that I'm giving the standard formulation of the fine-tuning argument. But once you allow for the possibility that there might be deeper physics that our physics is incomplete, I think you need a more modest formulation of the fine-tuning argument where the probabilities are not that extreme. But I still think you get substantial confirmation for theism even if it's not this like doineering 10 to the 90 to1.
¶125Um but my point here about the the lack of parallelism between you know kind of this vaguely defined enrich naturalism and theism I think holds. there's a lack of uniformity postulated by enriched naturalism. >> Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, I'm glad that the deeper physics stuff is resonates with you because that does seem to be quite salient here.
¶126Like, um, >> to go back to the cutter schmid example. I mean, uh, it's true if we just if we set it up like that that there's just we pick some arbitrary square foot somewhere in the universe and say, what if the laws don't don't operate there? Fine. That does seem pretty unlikely. Yeah.
¶127On the other hand, the actual models of um the evolution of the universe do say things about like you know if you rewind really early stages after the big bang that the the number of forces for instance start changes they kind of come together. So the laws of physics actually do change and aren't always the same uniformly. If we think if we're allowed to consider like the early first second of the universe effectively the laws of physics are different than they are now because it took some time for gravity to emerge from the other otherwise super force that was present at that point. So I mean there is a very >> small section of the universe where the laws of physics are different than than they are everywhere else but that's just what the model that's that's our standard model of physics. Yes.
¶128So it's you know it's not one that has uniformity everywhere. So I mean it just seems like there's the Joe Schmidt exampid cutter example is it does seem implausible but there's another way of construing that where effectively there's a deeper physics which explains what's going on and how gravity can be different at some uh different part of the universe. So yeah, >> uh then that seems like what you're saying is you're conceding that some deeper physics explanation might um reduce the seeming arbitrariness of this move here. >> And obviously >> let's say Smolan's the details of Smolan's actual project are do result in a in a model that doesn't fit the data and it's false. Fine.
¶129I'm I'm not, you know, an advocate. I don't even understand theory enough to be an advocate for his actual theory rather than just plucking it as as a way of illustrating the point. But it could be that there is some deeper physics like um >> if we were having this conversation 230 years ago, we might have been discussing the complexity of the eye or something instead and using a kind of paley example. Yeah. um not knowing that just around the corner we were going to have um a Darwinian explanation that was effectively deeper biology that was going to just explain away a lot of this kind of mystery about like how how does this biological complexity arise you know is it all just by chance or was it made by God right >> but now we're doing exactly the same conversation in terms of physics and it just seems like a prudent if nothing else to to anticipate that there might be some deeper physics about to come along which makes some of this go away and And that's just what I'm I feel like I'm allowed to postulate that and if you tell me that when I say that there might be some deeper physics like some disposition however we can cash that out >> that that means that that hypothesis now is 1 in 10 to the 90.
¶130Well you you read back from that number. So >> actually what do you mean by like what roughly what sort of range are we talking about? Not >> one roughly like because I'm I'm formulating as we speak like a more modified fine-tuning argument more modest one. Yeah, >> I think at the end of the day the evidential significance of fine tuning for theism and naturalism it's more like 10,000 to one >> versus 10 to1. So compared to 10 to the 90 to1 you think 10,000 to1 that's not very much >> right that's extremely but in terms of like you know the evidential significance of data presented in a court of law that would be quite powerful evidence maybe not damning it again so that's what I mean is that that kind of a number brings it back into the range of like reasonable parties can disagree some people might think evil outweighs it whereas if you're stuck at the 10 to the 90 level >> uh you'll get a situation like William Lane Craig debating Alex Okconor responding to the problem of animal suffer suffering by saying, "Yeah, but fine-tuning, right?
¶131I mean, this is you wouldn't even have animals absent fine-tuning." And so, you know, you have to see that however much theism is disconfirmed by animal suffering, it's confirmed even more by by fine-tuning. So, that's that's more akin to what I mean. Um the point about the limitations on the laws of physics as we currently formulate them um doesn't undercut my point because we have evidence for variation in the laws of physics that our theories break down at some point in the past as energy levels get higher and higher. The theories themselves break down. So we have reason to postulate variation.
¶132I I don't mean that it's like impossible to discover variation as opposed to uniformity. Like you you can open the barrel of apples and see that 99 are red and one is green. like that can happen and you can have evidence for that. It's just saying that when you're in an epistemic position where you don't have that like the prior probabilities, the uniformity version of the relevant hypothesis is going to take up a greater share of probability if we think there's a solution to the problem of induction than the qualified counterparts. So I so I think your example is is to the point.
¶133It doesn't mean that uniformity makes it certain that the hypothesis in question is true, but just that it it takes up a much larger share of the expectation than does these qualified parts. Um and then the point about deeper physics as such I think the re the reason I I feel confident about the uh you know factor of 10,000 to one supporting theism to naturalism after we take account of fine-tuning is that the number of things that a deeper physics has to get right in order to fix fine-tuning fine-tune parameters is enormous because most of these parameters are from our current vantage point independent of one another. So on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry for fine-tuning, uh the author lists out eight different instances of fine-tuning things like the initial low entropy of the universe, the the density fluctuations in mass energy of the very early universe, the strength of cosmological constant. So what what you have to conceiving values, it's it's like the probability that there's a deeper physics for each of these eight parameters. And so those just multiply.
¶134So that is why I'm confident that this kind of catchall there is a deeper physics that fixes the values of the parameters. It's not just a oneshot thing. It's we need eight different things to happen simultaneously. And that's a conservative estimate. I mean like the most widely discussed example of deeper physics is the the um spatial flatness of the universe.
¶135Inflation came along and provided a dynamical explanation for why we observe the universe to be flat. that was a fine-tuned condition in standard in the standard model of cosmology prior to inflation. Um but it explained flatness but it didn't explain any of the other fine-tuned parameters. So there's just no guarantee that a successful explanation say the cosmological constant is going to transfer. So it might not be quite like independent multiplication of odds but it does build up as we add on more and more examples of of fine.
¶136Well, I Yeah, I >> I wonder whether we can because I want to talk about something called an existential lottery, but um I wondered if you had a final rejoinder. Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean I there's so just very quickly just whilst it's in my head that the independence of the constants I mean that seems to be something that's up for grabs if there's deeper physics and you can't guarantee that they're independent or not if because maybe they're >> depends what the deeper physics is. So >> um you don't get to say that I'm I have to find eight different deeper physicses um because maybe one will will do.
¶137So we we just don't know. So that just seems like a kind of irrelevant. I mean maybe worst case scenario I need eight different new physics uh details to go on. Best case scenario, I only need one. We just don't know which of those is right.
¶138So doesn't really matter spec speculating about it. Um at least in my in my assessment of it right now. The other thing I wanted to say quickly on this was that it seems like we've brought we've brought down the factor from 90 orders of magnitude by 85 orders of magnitude which is good which feels like progress to me because it makes it easier to draw this game of chess doesn't have to go on that long. Um, a one way to sort of maybe bring out the to try and get those two numbers to look more like each other is I just wanted to highlight that if you were just defending um and maybe you are in in the purposes of this like academic discussion >> just omnitheism and that you know fine but >> I think once you start adding in details and the complexities of like say Christian theism >> then I'm starting to say wow it doesn't seem that simple anymore. I mean like it's not just omni benevolent uh omni omniscient whatever god now it's a triune god lots of people who are not Christian find that idea difficult to understand it seems like it's adding in a lot of uncertainty especially if he doesn't make sense um you have to add in that you know biblical stories God's acting in these ways that he has a son who dies for him a lot of non-Christians don't understand that you know typical sort of chump atheist responses about like, oh, he just has to kill himself to forgive himself to whatever.
¶139I'm not saying I'm making those arguments, but like um a reasonable person could say, look, Christianity is more complex and therefore less intrinsically likely than that that sort of god of the philosophers is just a being that has three properties or whatever. The Christian God has lots of other properties and some of them are controversial. And if all I have to get to is 1 in 10,000, I mean, I I start to think that, well, we're never going to agree on the number and there's no point like really trying to find a number between us today. But like, you know, some atheists are definitely going to agree to that number and not you know, so the numbers are looking roughly ballpark anyway in my in my estimation. A reasonable person could say that the numbers are ballpark anyway.
¶140Whereas if we were stuck with insisting on it being 1 in 10 the 90 that just feels like it's such an absurd number that nobody could possibly motivate that even Christian >> conception of God is 1 in 10^ the 90 unlikely right that's just that that's that's what's absurd about it but once we row back from that now it feels like victory or at least drawing seems like is back on the table whereas I I I could I feel like I could motivate Christianity being that unlikely at least from my perspective I'm never going convince you of that, of course, but like a reasonable person could start to hold those sorts of views and and then and then that seems like good news for me. That that's that's what I think. The more modest argument that you're putting forward feels like it's uh the sort of thing that could be potentially addressed. Anyway, that's that's how I feel. >> A quick thought.
¶141>> Yeah, I'll just end with I think that is a virtue of the the modest formulation of the fine-tuning argument is that it allows that reasonable people can draw different conclusions about the evidential significance of things. I I think that I would never want to say that atheists are irrational or unreasonable. The evidence is too comp. Some of them are, but as a general rule, the evidence is too complicated and nuanced and reasonable. People can disagree.
¶142That being said, I think when you look at it carefully, we do have substantial evidence for theism. But that isn't to say that people who draw different conclusions are irrational in doing so. >> Alex, you've been working with a philosopher at St. Andrews. I think we mentioned him earlier, Nathan Bray on a new argument against finetuning which you refer to as the existential lottery argument.
¶143Uh can you unpack that for us? >> Yeah. So I mean it's it's I maybe [clears throat] it's not directly an counter argument to fine-tuning as such. It's relevant and um this this is a new a new argument we've been working on. I I shared the draft with with both of you in fact before we started talking.
¶144So I'm not ambushing Miles with this and um he's already thought of an objection. Um so let's let's go through this. So the basic idea here is um typically with uh let's say teological arguments and I'm including a fine-tuning argument here but also the sort of traditional design argument theists were are going to say look there's a really an unlikely thing here can't be explained on naturalism it's better explained on theism right so it's typically you find something unlikely looking and that's supposed to be evidence for theism and and in this argument we sort of want to flip that narrative around. So, it's like saying, "Oh, look, here's an unlikely thing. It's actually evidence for naturalism against theism." So, sort of upside down version of the argument um from fine-tuning.
¶145Um and another nice way to think about what this is is um Paul Draper has this um thing he calls the fallacy of understated evidence. And I think I this is where I was starting to think about this argument was was in relation to this. So the fallacy of understated evidence, the example JP uses is like imagine a court case where someone is um on trial for stabbing somebody and the prosecutions say as part of their evidence, well it's he's well known to carry a knife on him at all times. So you know that makes it seem more likely that he's the murderer, right? Because he carries a knife all the time and this guy was stabbed with a knife.
¶146Um but what's going on is that the prosecution fail to mention they they understate the evidence essentially know but don't say that the knife that he's well known to carry is a butter knife and that's you know that the person who's been killed like with a different type of knife let's say or a butter knife couldn't kill someone. So like if you say the evidence in a general way looks like it supports the hypothesis but when you actually spell it out more detail then it counts against the hypothesis. So that's the basic idea here. So anyway, enough preamble. But the point was um that and this is sort of generic sort of philosophy 101 thing that you might think which is that like you know a lot of stuff had to go right in my um say genetic background in order for me to be here today right like um >> I I'm not sure how how to put this on premier Christian unbelievable radio but in let's say intercourse between a man and a woman then um there's like 300 million sperms in each let's say packet And um if if others of those had won the race, apart from the one that that won on the night when you were conceived, then a a genetically different person would have been produced.
¶147And lots of people would say that's enough for it to be the case that if you wouldn't have been produced, would have been a different person like a similar person genetically in many ways, but wouldn't have been you. It would have been a different person. And then obviously every um step in the reproductive history of your lineage, right, going back throughout history, uh you also had to win those races as well in order to even be with a chance. So this is the existential lottery aspect. >> And that's just one way of cashing out what this so you can get a sort of sense of vertigo thinking about how many contingent things had to land exactly right for you to be here today, right?
¶148It's not just which sperm won the race on that given night. I mean, possibly your father had to, you know, land a joke correctly with your mother in order to get the uh the ball rolling in in order for the the race to even be on that night or something. And maybe he'd said that wrong, it wouldn't have played out either. So, there's all these intangible, impossible to quantify contingencies that sort of landed your way such that, you know, you couldn't really put a number on it, but it's a very big number. I don't know if I want to say one in 10^ the 90, but maybe I don't know, right?
¶149If we trace all of the contingencies back, maybe it's even bigger. Who knows, right? But it's it's very unlikely at this point. Either side doesn't tell in favor of anybody. You know, the theist also thinks that you've run won this lottery just like the naturalist.
¶150The way to bring out that there might be a difference between the two is at least on most forms of theism and not on most forms of naturalism, the theist is going to say that there's some part of the person that survives the death of the body. Whereas a naturalist is going to say that there isn't any part of that person that survives the death of the body. Um so t let's call that thing the soul. And if something if the soul can survive the death of the body then the soul's existence is independent on the existence of the body can exist without it. So it's logically in not dependent on the body.
¶151It's independent from the body. And if you think that already, then it's conceivable at least that all this genetic lottery was won. And let's say God decided to pair the body that was the production of that lottery with this soul and that made you. But he could have instead because the two things are logically independent picked a different soul like off a shelf or something and put that in its place instead. Craig and Mulland actually appeal to this type of intuition uh when trying to motivate substance dualism.
¶152I think they say God could have they think about the soul as a light bulb that's screwed into a lamp and that God could have screwed a different one. He could have screwed my light uh my soul into your body and your soul into my body in principle. The two things are independent from one another. But if that's right, then what that means is at the end of the existential lottery that the naturalist has gone through, then you know some physical genetic stuff has to take place and at the end of that out pops me. Very unlikely, but that's what happened.
¶153If theism is true, all of that stuff had to happen and then I had to win one more race, which was God had to pair that body with the right soul for it to be me. Because if we paired it with a different one, the intuition would be it wouldn't be me. Even though the body was the same, it would have been a different person. Well, then how many souls are there that he could have paired it with instead of this one? Well, what does that mean?
¶154It means how many possible souls are there? Right? Now, I don't know that there's a good way to answer that question of how many possible souls there are. Doesn't seem like the number could be finite though, right? I mean, why think that it's just 10 million or a billion or something?
¶155Um, so it's infinitely many, let's say. Um there's this philosopher whose name I always say wrong. Who's called Nevin Clemen Clemenhagger. >> Yep. >> Yes.
¶156Good. Nailed it. Um who recently has this paper when it which is about the problem you mentioned before about whether there's a best of all possible worlds. Um and without going into any of the details of that he he speculates at some point that maybe um there's there's an absolute infinity of possible souls. you know, absolute infinity is the is like the biggest possible infinity.
¶157Like, so as we know from the last time I was here, there's this uh hierarchy of different levels of infinity, right? But the counting numbers being the the smallest and then it just kind of goes up and up and up. And can just says, listen, the infolite infinity is such that for any cardality, any amount, it's bigger than that. That's the definition for it. Right?
¶158It cannot be contained in any number. Like if if you try and give it a number, it's bigger than that number. Whatever you're saying, even if it's infinity, it's bigger than that. Right? And that's the number of souls that Clement Hager says maybe there's that many.
¶159If that's right, I'm not saying that he's right about that, but if that's right, what that means is that then this last step in the lottery means you've won a race where the odds were literally won in an absolute infinity. And it couldn't be a a worse lottery to try and win, right? It's an absolute infinite decimal chance that you would win that. And that just means that like now we're not comparing two theories where one of them is like a very small but finite number against another one where it's a different type of finite number. Now it's some kind of finite number against literally the smallest conception of number you can have.
¶160>> Yeah. >> Right. So there's a categorical gulf between them. And if that's right, then that just means that this massively favors naturalism. Your existence today couldn't have it basically almost couldn't have been the case if uh on theism could only have been the case on naturalism.
¶161So it's like a super strong, >> right? And I'm not saying all of the pieces in this argument fit together perfectly well and we're going to hear an objection now. And I we've thought of a couple of objections and I think some of them you can go well okay it's not a problem for you but it is a problem for people who buy the assumptions or something. So anyway, that's the basic idea of the >> So we've got a we've got a free tier viewer right here. >> Maybe maybe yeah, focus on an argument or you know your strongest argument or a couple of arguments.
¶162>> I mean I think there's one objection which as far as I can tell is pretty devastating that would imply that this is not a good argument that on naturalism. So let's let's say that the condition for my existing or the the relevant like criteria is the genetic code. You can add on other things like other contingencies but the the total stock will be finite and we'll just say a particular genome that's me. If I exist that genome is what I will have on naturalism that genome existing is a necessary condition for my existence but it's not a sufficient one because in a sufficiently large universe you don't even need recourse to a multiverse. In a sufficiently large universe, if the total stock of possible X's fill in the blanks of possible genomes is finite, then in a sufficiently large universe, you will have two genomes, two copies, qualitative duplicates if you will, of that genome existing at the same time.
¶163But then you'll have two different people, right? So do you see what I mean? If it does follow that if I exist, then this genome will exist. But it does not follow that if this genome exists therefore I will exist. So yes and there's no limit upon how many you know qualitative duplicates of these different genomes there could be.
¶164You could have an infinite number of them and then therefore an infinite number of different possible people correlated with just that one genome. Um and so the the point is that the number of possible people under naturalism and under theism is identical. Even if you have this connection between possible genomes and possible people for any specific genome that obtains there's an infinite number of possible people that could have won the lottery to be instantiated so to speak with that particular genome. There are ways around this. You could say that no in the case where the genome happens twice at the same time in a sufficiently big universe or a multiverse you literally billocate and exist in two places at once.
¶165But that the metaphysics there is just bizarre and it increases substantially the the philosophical cost of this initially a quite simple argument I think. >> Okay. Well, I mean I and thank you for the objection because it's really thoughtprovoking. Um, so I think my and and you know this is this is totally new so it's not like um I I may have to just go away and think about it more but my initial thought is well yeah I I never meant to say that your genetic inheritance is your necessary and sufficient conditions >> and obviously it would be implausible um like isn't it isn't a clone just a genetic copy isn't you know Dolly the sheep or whatever was that is exactly the same genetic >> combination as the original. >> The science is obscure to me, but it might be >> identical twins.
¶166Are they not anyway what even so there are I think even humrum and and actual cases where there's the genetic code is the same but there's two different people that's that's fine. So I would have to >> and I think I implicitly do think that there's something else as well is the genetic inheritance. Just the only reason really for bringing genetic inheritance in is that it's a way of giving you some handle on the numbers because we can talk about how many sperms there are in each packet and um then you can get some kind of odds going right and and start to see what the numbers look like. But it doesn't mean that I'm committed to to some kind of theory of personal identity which is me is genetic reductionism or something like this. That that would be implausible and I I wouldn't go with that anyway.
¶167I'm going to say something like what makes Dolly the sheep and the clone of Dolly the sheep distinct from one another even though they share the same genetic uh code isn't going to be that one of them has a soul that the other one doesn't have. Right? I'm going to say something like there's a causal history that I can identify them or something along those lines. So I feel like the naturalist can just say well you know I'm not that worried about this because I'm not saying it's necessarily unsufficient. So maybe I'm misunderstanding the force because you said this was a devastating objection, but it seems to me that it would be devastating if I was saying the strong thing about this with genetic reduction theory of personhood.
¶168And I I didn't mean to give that impression. That's not how I see it as part of the argument. I'm just trying I don't know what the necessary insufficient conditions of personal identity are. It's a very tricky area of philosophy. Um, but I'm sure that the naturalist could there must be some kind of naturalist alternative.
¶169I gestured towards using causal history to identify the distinct persons there. >> Can I just ask a clarifying question? So, are you sort of seeing the theist as committed to a sort of substance dualism? >> Well, specifically, >> good question. So I think I guess I'm not saying if you're a theist you have to be a substance dualist, but I'm saying if you're a theist and a substance dualist like some people Craig and Mand for instance, then this argument is then going to affect you.
¶170If you're a theist and uh like Vaning, materialist part of the mind, then this argument is not going to bother you, right? And if you're an atheist who believes in a soul like I think um humor, is that right? Did you have an interview with him where he did? >> Yeah. And he believes in reincarnation on the basis of substant dualism and some other probabilistic arguments.
¶171>> There you go. So he might be in trouble with this argument just as much as Craig is even though he's an atheist. So it's like I said at the beginning, it's it doesn't quite partition naturalism and theism. >> It's most especially an argument against the combination of substance dualism and theism probably. >> Right.
¶172Right. The the guiding intuition was if you think there's something that survives the death of the body, then you're in trouble with this argument. most theists are because you know I mean this is speculative right but there's some connection between the motivations for religion and like fear of death and and whatever so like it's not a coincidence that lots of religions posit like hey you got this solution to the problem of death for you right that's like most religions and therefore >> they mostly are committed to the view that something survives the body and this is an argument that poses trouble for people who have that view basically. Yeah, maybe a final thought for you. >> Well, I think the exact same problem recurs at this higher level of an expanded set of necessary and sufficient conditions.
¶173To to get the argument off the ground, you'll you'll have to specify something like call it X, the conditions under which that are necessary and sufficient for me. My genetic code say plus my the contingencies of my causal history. If the stock of that of X is finite, then you will have the exact same problem that in a sufficiently large universe, you will have duplication of each individual X multiple times. So you will have my the exact conditions that you're calling necessary and sufficient for me. That will happen twice in the sufficiently large universe.
¶174And it's >> certain causal history. >> Well, so Max Tagmark makes this point about um like a level one multiverse of an infinite expanse. If there are a finite number of possible states in an infinite expanse, then every possible state of affairs will be duplicated an infinite number of times and every possible universe history will be duplicated an infinite number of times. So whatever you want to ex expand out as the conditions under which I will exist. Um those will happen an infinite number of times and I will only exist in one of them.
¶175And so that means there's no one toone correspondence between the set of these conditions and the set of possible people under naturalism. I so this is good. It's thoughtprovoking because like I guess I was construing the causal origins leading up to the person being generated as being concrete causal events like concrete events. >> Yeah. >> And so even if on the other side of the multiverse there's a person that looks just like me.
¶176Yeah. and every causal event in in his >> past looks just like the ones in my past. They wouldn't actually be the ones in my past. And then so I can distinguish the two from one another. And yes, >> in which case I'm not seeing how your objection works.
¶177>> So if you do that, so this is the thing. You can state it as a dilemma. The stock of of possible x's is either finite or it's infinite. If it's finite, it will recur and it therefore is not plausibly a sufficient condition for any individual person. Or if it's infinite, as it would be in this case with an infinite multiverse where we're identifying it with these exact series of things.
¶178There's an infinite number of universes. There's an infinite number of such specifications. Well, then there's no probabilistic advantage for the naturalist because now there's an infinite number of possible conditions. One for this universe, one for that universe, one for that, one for that duplicate. And you no longer have the the finite number that you need to get the infinite confirmation.
¶179>> Okay, good. I feel like we're gonna have to um continue that conversation over a pint or something later because I I need mental lubrication going. [laughter] >> Yes. Yes. And if any listeners are scratching their heads uh wondering about some of these arguments, whether it's divine psychology or the stalking horse or this new existential lottery, which you should definitely uh keep your eyes, uh peeled for or maybe I should say stay tuned for, stay finely tuned for.
¶180Um then please do check out the work of Alex and Miles. That's Thorology uh with Alex Malpass and um uncertainty your podcast but also you're an avid substacker like me. So is that Miles K. Donahue for your substack as well. >> Gentlemen, whatever brought us here, whether it's >> a trillion universes emerging through black holes or a finely tuned universe through intelligent design.
¶181I'm so glad the conditions were right to bring us together. Thank you so much. Mars Donghue, Alex Malfas, thanks for coming on. Unbelievable. >> Thank you so much.