Sutter first frames the fine-tuning argument this way:
Some argue that the way the universe is constructed is a little too particular. That if any one small thing were to change, from the speed of light to the amount of atomic matter assembled during the big bang, life as we know it would be outright impossible.He then responds to the argument as follows:
Perhaps some other form of intelligence could rise up in that strange cosmos, shuddering at the impossible thought of creatures anchored to a planet and swimming in its water oceans. Perhaps not. Either way, it appears that our universe is especially tuned for the appearance of life as we know it, indicating either divine intervention or some conspiracy of physics too far beyond our comprehension to grasp.
To that line of thinking I have this response. We have but one universe for us to study; it is all we’ve had and all that ever will be. As peculiar as this universe of ours appears, we cannot access or interrogate other possibilities.In other words, Sutter is claiming that we can't conclude that our universe is improbable because it's the only universe we know anything about. We have nothing else to compare it to. Maybe there's an infinity of other universes out there, but we don't know. So without something to compare ours to we can't say whether ours is improbable or not.
We do not know how special or generic this cosmos is, the same way you could not measure the probability of the Queen of Diamonds appearing in your hand if you did not know the contents of the full deck. That stark reality does not rule out divinity or exotic physics, but it also does not demand them. If you wish to believe in either of those, I will not begrudge you.
Luskin offers an interesting counter-argument to Sutter's Queen of Diamonds analogy he calls the Cancer Cluster:
Imagine that 100 percent of an entire town of 10,000 people got cancer within one year — a cancer cluster. It turns out the chemical plant in the town produces carcinogenic chemicals, so the townspeople sue the chemical plant.Read Luskin's whole piece at the link.
During the trial, the townspeople hire scientists as expert witnesses who testify that the odds of this occurring just by chance are 1 in 10^10,000. Under normal scientific reasoning, they argue, such low odds establish that chance cannot be the explanation, and that there must be some physical agent causing cancer in the town. In this case, the best explanation is that chemicals from the chemical plant caused the cancer.
The chemical plant has a lot of money, and they hire a wily defense attorney who invokes the multiverse defense, saying:
"Yes, 1 in 10^10,000 is a very low probability. But there could be 10^10,000 universes out there in the multiverse, and our universe just happens to be the unlucky one where this unlikely cancer cluster arose — purely by chance!
"You can’t say there aren’t 10^10,000 universes out there, right? That means you can’t conclude that my client’s chemical plant had anything to do with this — the whole thing could have happened as a chance occurrence!"
Should the jury trust the scientists and conclude the cancer cluster is highly improbable and caused by chemical plant, or should they trust the lawyer and invent 10^10,000 universes where this kind of cancer cluster becomes probable enough to happen by chance?
The shady attorney deflects criticism saying: “You can’t say there aren’t 10^10,000 universes out there, right?” Right — but that’s the point. There’s no way to test the multiverse, and science should not seriously consider untestable theories.
Multiverse thinking makes it impossible to rule out chance, which essentially eliminates the basis for drawing many scientific conclusions. What we have before us is a cancer cluster and a chemical plant, and that’s enough to make a sound scientific conclusion.
In the same way, Sutter doesn’t argue that there is necessarily a multiverse. Rather, he argues that if we can’t know that there isn’t a multiverse then we can’t draw a conclusion of design.
This isn’t all that different from the shady attorney who says, “You can’t say there aren’t 10^10,000 universes out there, right?” But as the hypothetical cancer cluster shows, we could extend multiverse logic and appeals to unknown causes to destroy virtually any scientific conclusion. But that’s not how science works.
What we have before us is a universe that is, to all appearances, finely tuned for life. That’s data, and that’s enough to draw a sound scientific conclusion: design.
I'll offer a slightly different response to Sutter tomorrow.
