Does a Delayed Origin for Biological Life Count as Evidence Against the Existence of God?

Many theists have argued that contemporary physics provides evidence for the existence of God, insofar as the fundamental laws of nature display evidence of having been fine-tuned to allow for the emergence of biological life. (See, e.g., the works of Stephen Barr, Robin Collins, Paul Davies, John L...

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Veröffentlicht in:Sophia
1. VerfasserIn: Dumsday, Travis (VerfasserIn)
Medienart: Elektronisch Aufsatz
Sprache:Englisch
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Veröffentlicht: Springer Netherlands [2017]
In: Sophia
Jahr: 2017, Band: 56, Heft: 4, Seiten: 649-669
IxTheo Notationen:AB Religionsphilosophie; Religionskritik; Atheismus
CF Christentum und Wissenschaft
NBC Gotteslehre
NBD Schöpfungslehre
weitere Schlagwörter:B Design
B Theism
B Atheism
B Life
B Biology
B Natural Theology
B Fine-tuning
B God
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Zusammenfassung:Many theists have argued that contemporary physics provides evidence for the existence of God, insofar as the fundamental laws of nature display evidence of having been fine-tuned to allow for the emergence of biological life. (See, e.g., the works of Stephen Barr, Robin Collins, Paul Davies, John Leslie, Richard Swinburne, etc.) But some have objected that this evidence needs to be weighed against the conflicting evidence that biological life is a relatively late phenomenon in the universe. For if God really wanted the universe to contain life (esp. intelligent life), such that He specifically designed its laws with this in mind, why would He have set things up in such a way that it took billions of years for life to appear? One can employ this general concern to formulate an argument against intelligent design. In this paper I critically evaluate some existing theistic solutions to this sort of argument, and also propose several new lines of reply.
ISSN:1873-930X
Enthält:Enthalten in: Sophia
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s11841-017-0574-0