Topics Religion

Question Theists often claim that the "fine-tuning" of the universe indicates that it was created especially for man by a divine benevolence. Doesn't the fact that the earth will eventually be incapable of supporting any life (when the sun eventually runs out of energy) disprove this hypothesis? And what of the fact that the entire universe it seems will one day be incapable of supporting intelligent life (the big-freeze)?

Accepted:
October 21, 2010

Comments

It's an interesting question, but for many theists it's not obviously a problem. Think about the traditional Christian idea of the Day of Judgment, for instance. If that's set for some finite time in the future, the fact that the universe might wind down sometime thereafter isn't an issue; by then the material world will already have served its purpose.

Whether one finds such a plausible is another discussion, of course. But on the narrower question of whether the Big Freeze freezes out the Fine Tuning Argument, the answer is that it depends on the associated eschatology, and for many such, the answer is no.

Yeah -- I don't think you need to go so far as the future to raise these sorts of questions. To believe in fine-tuning is to believe in being tuned to some end or purpose -- and it's strange to imagine that it's tuned to the purpose of some part or subsection of the universe: it should be all or none, the whole package, and every element of the package should be part fo the design. Well there are already plenty of places in the cosmos that are inhospitable to life, to intelligent life (most of empty space, say), and there are plenty of places on earth that are --such a tiny tiny proponent of the current cosmos seems a candidate for 'design', which ought ,you'd imagine, lessen the inclination to see the cosmos as a whole designed .... (what's all that empty space for anyway?)