I was fortunate to have spent some time in conversation with one of the leading physicists in the world a few years ago at a conference he keynoted. He is intensely uncomfortable with the observed "tuning" of the constants of the general model BECAUSE it points to a creator who did the tuning--the tuning is way too improbably to have happened by chance. Even worse, from his perspective, it points to a tuner who planned on having humans around.
He has spent a good deal of the past decade working on theories to get around that implication with not much success.
If a “Creator” did some “tuning” to create an Earth that is so “unique,” why did that “Creator” have to create a universe that is so unfathomably large, and then have to wait 16 billion years before that “unique” Earth spawned human life? I hate to cast aspersions on your deity, but your god is one slow and inefficient creator.
Did he actually admit that, or is that just what you observed?
It sounds as if your physicist friend was engaging with the Strong Anthropic principle, which I'll try and do some justice to.
The Strong Anthropic principle
First, we should distinguish the “strong” Anthropic Principle from the “weak” one.
The weak one is roughly along the lines of “isn’t it lucky we live just far enough away from the Sun to live”. And similar arguments, like “lucky that humans got a chance to evolve when the Dinosaurs cacked it” etc. It’s weak because this argument can be countered by the “humans are simply self-selecting observers who live on one lucky ball of rock” argument.
The strong version of the Anthropic Principle is the observation that this Universe appears to have been designed to allow life to exist. In any form. At all.
Out of all the infinitely variable boundary conditions of the Universe (the Gravitational constant, the relative strength of the Strong and Weak forces, and many others) the Universe just *happens* to have, or to embody, the exact set of parameters which make matter, space and life itself possible.
Note the emphasis on “possible”. We are not talking about there being a universe which happened to give rise to humans, baboons and bacteria. That would be the weak Anthropic principle.
We are talking about there being a universe where life is possible in any form whatever. If one of the Universe’s constants were to change by a few decimal places then the Universe would consist only of hydrogen, or only of baryons - or it would have lasted only a few millenia before crunching back on itself. The prima-facie odds of getting even carbon-synthesis to work are extraordinarily remote, and everything else has to be “just right” as well
The odds are literally infinitesimal that our Universe just happened to get it right. The religious, supernatural theory that the Universe was designed - and designed for us - is strongly supported by the extraordinary unlikelihood of the Universe being able to support any kind of life.
The usual (materialistic or atheistic) counter-argument against the (strong) Anthropic Principle is the theory that there are quadrillions of parallel Universes, one of which is ours. Ours is only special in that we are in it to observe it’s existence.
This parallel universe theory (apart from being a tired Star-Trek trope) turns out to be a non-disprovable. Any “other” Universe would have to be completely orthogonal to this one, with no interaction of any kind. If a scientist could detect another Universe, he would have - by definition - simply have detected more of ‘the’ Universe. The so-called ‘universes’ of Brane theory, hyperdimensional regions of dark matter interacting weakly with our own - these are part of “the” Universe, which is revealed to be a multiply-connected region.
Strict materialists would therefore have to adopt the position that there exist unthinkable infinities of rigidly unknowable and undetectable Universes covering the gamut of all possible physical constants in order for us to have become self-selected observers of this “one” Universe - the one that happens to have the right conditions for life.
This position “might” be true - but by its very nature it cannot be proven (”Hey! I've detected a Universe which (by definition) is totally orthogonal from this one” is a statement that cannot be true). Materialists have to move to a position not readily distinguishable from religious belief in order to contest the logical consequence of the (strong) Anthropic Principle - which is that this Universe has been extremely precisely tailored to the existence of life.
Hope this is helpful/useful.
People make their choices. For a Creator, against a Creator.
Then they look at the evidence and interpret it to their already preconceived viewpoint.
For the atheist, their reasoning is often that they understand the implications of a Creator, and reject it for narcissistic reasons - there’s something in their life they’d have to give up, usually Pride related.
Don’t spend too much time trying to convince the hardened heart. There are too many out there looking for the real truth that are actually open to hearing it.
Fascinating. Thanks for your post.
I thought string theory admitted unlimited numbers of parallel universes - some of them would certainly be configured with fundamental constants sufficient to harbor stable systems long enough to evolve life, and all that.