Religion

What is the current general consensus as to the fine-tuning design argument for the existence of God? Thanks.

Comments

I suspect that there is no general consensus at this point, though some atheists take the argument seriously (for example, Thomas Nagel in his recent book Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament) and the argument is now often included in stanard anthologies in philosophy of mind. Robin Collins is probably one of the best and clearest advocates of the argument, and I believe he has a book coming out defending the argument. Philosophers who are in the Humean tradition tend to be skeptical about arguments about the cause of the universe, owing to the uniqueness of the universe. In the words of another philosopher, universes are not as common as blackberries --which one might compare and contrast in determining whether our own universe is designed or not. The uniqueness objection does not (in my view) pose a serious problem as there are a range of areas in which we do reach reasonable philosophical conclusions notwithstanding uniqueness (such arguments may be found in epistemology and metaphysics). I suspect that the success (in terms of gaining adherents) of the fine-tuning argument will rest on the extent that a person believes that theism is a live philosophical alternative. If one begins examining the fine-tuning argument with an antecedent conviction that theism is incoherent or otherwise implausable, I think success will be an up hill battle, but if one is open to theism the argument has some force. Of course, the fine-tuning argument would not give you theism yet (it would give you the conclusion that it is plausable to believe in a teleological reality or purposive force) so one would need other arguments (such as the cosmological argument, the argument from religious experience and so on) to arrive a theism proper.

Read another response by Charles Taliaferro

Read another response about Religion