Four (Or So) New Fine-Tuning Arguments

Both proponents and opponents of the argument for the deliberate fine-tuning, by an intelligent agent, of the fundamental constants of the universe have accepted certain assumptions about how the argument will go. These include both treating the fine-tuning of the constants as constitutive of the na...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European journal for philosophy of religion
Main Author: McGrew, Lydia (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: University of Innsbruck in cooperation with the John Hick Centre for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Birmingham [2016]
In: European journal for philosophy of religion
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Cosmology / Fundamental constant / Intelligent design
IxTheo Classification:AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism
Online Access: Volltext (doi)
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Summary:Both proponents and opponents of the argument for the deliberate fine-tuning, by an intelligent agent, of the fundamental constants of the universe have accepted certain assumptions about how the argument will go. These include both treating the fine-tuning of the constants as constitutive of the nature of the universe itself and conditioning on the fact that the constants actually do fall into the life-permitting range, rather than on the narrowness of the range. It is also generally assumed that the fine-tuning argument should precede biological arguments for design from, e.g., the origin of life. I suggest four new arguments, two of which are different orderings of the same data. Each of these abandons one or more of the common assumptions about how the fine-tuning argument should go, and they provide new possibilities for answering or avoiding objections to the fine-tuning argument.
Contains:Enthalten in: European journal for philosophy of religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.24204/ejpr.v8i2.59