Brute Facts, Simplicity, Fine-tuning, and the Multiverse
There are several different arguments that the universe or some aspect of the universe is designed. I’m going to bypass some traditional ones which I think are weak and look at one that I think does have some force, the fine-tuning argument. I will also look at a common response to this argument, the multiverse argument. This is a preliminary discussion. I will not be going into the very complicated scientific and philosophical arguments for and against the existence of God by means of these arguments but only their basic form. My hope is that this will provide some important insights into these arguments and issues.
Francis Collins explained the gist of the fine-tuning argument like this, “When you look from the perspective of a scientist at the universe, it looks as if it knew we were coming. There are 15 constants—the gravitational constant, various constants about the strong and weak nuclear force, etc.—that have precise values.
“If any one of those constants was off by even one part in a million, or in some cases, by one part in a million million, the universe could not have actually come to the point where we see it. Matter would not have been able to coalesce [or it would coalesce too quickly], there would have been no galaxy, stars, planets or people.”1
Stephen Hawking said: “The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang are enormous. I think there are clearly religious implications.”2 Again he said, “It would be very difficult to explain why the universe would have begun in just this way except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.”3
Now I think the best response to this argument, likely the only response that might work, is the multiverse claim. There could be millions, maybe even an infinite number, of other universes, many with different values for these constants. Or these universes could come into being sequentially, one after the other. The strength of gravity is a little stronger in one, maybe it’s a lot stronger in another, and then it’s weaker in still another. If we have enough universes with enough variations, then eventually we will have at least one which is suitable for the emergence of life, and even intelligent life.
So is there a multiverse? This is hotly debated. There are some hints but generally my impression is that there isn’t any very strong evidence that there is or is not a multiverse. But even if there is a multiverse, Robin Collins argues that the best models still require fine-tuning to produce such a multiverse.4 Nevertheless, this is not the final word. It is not my intention here to get into the complexities of the fine-tuning or multiverse arguments. Those interested in resolving this problem to their own satisfaction should look at the detailed work of researchers such as Robin Collins, Geraint Lewis, and Luke Barnes.5 I would like to look at the issues a little differently and offer some general considerations and conclusions.
Possibly the naturalist could avoid the scientific discussion and advance a slightly different argument. A lot of people think of the universe as just a brute fact. It’s just here and there is no explanation for it. At one time it may have just been an energy field, at other times it had other forms, but it’s always been here. Now I find some problems with this view, but let’s just assume for now that it is possible.
If we can think of our universe as just being there without needing any explanation, why couldn’t there be an infinite number of other universe’s which are just there?They’re all just brute facts, right? If this is so, this would explain the fine-tuning of the universe without having to resort to an intelligent designer. All of these universes could have slightly or greatly different values for their laws and constants.
Now many theists think of God as something like a brute fact. God is a necessary being, something that does not need an explanation; God is just an uncaused being which causes everything else to exist. If it is a choice between a brute fact multiverse and a brute fact God to explain the universe as we see it, then isn’t naturalism at least as likely as theism?
I think that here we get to the crux of one of the most essential difference between naturalism and theism. What was originally here? A self-existing universe or multiverse, or a self-existing God? We definitely know that it had to be one or the other or some variation of either because we are here now and we can’t just come out of nothing. Either this material universe or multiverse is self-existent or there is a God who is self-existent who caused the universe to come into being.
A self-existing universe or multiverse, or a self-existing God? We definitely know that it had to be one or the other . . . because we are here now and we can’t just come out of nothing.
It is God who is more likely the self-existent being. This universe is complex, but God is not; God is a very simple being and it is more likely the universe began as or came from something simple than complex.
I’m aware that Richard Dawkins has made it his most essential argument that God must be complex since God would possess all of the vastly extensive and complex knowledge of the universe; past, present, and future. Since God foreknew everything, God must have always had this complex knowledge.
Dawkins agrees that the universe must have come from either a very simple state or from something else which is very simple. But he goes on to say that some past simple form of the universe is far simpler than God. In fact he would say the universe even as it is now is simpler than this complex God.
I think Dawkins is wrong. He is right given his view of God, but we don’t need to accept that view of God. Think of it like this. Originally God was all there was. God was timeless so he had timeless and complete knowledge of all that was; that is, knowledge of himself. A changeless and timeless being is simpler than anything which is changing, all other things being equal.
God’s timeless knowledge included the awareness that God would cause time to come into being and to create that which is other than God. With the creation of change, and thus the creation of time, God chose to be aware of the complexity of that which would be created.
God’s original simple and over all knowledge became complex as God determined the details, how the simple knowledge would be spelled out as it were. It became complex as God chose to create different aspects and parts of the universe.
For example, because God is absolutely good, because God is perfect Love, God wanted to create so there would be more who would know the greatest good, the greatest joy, the joy of knowing God. It is more intuitively likely that if there is a creator of everything, that this creator would be absolutely good, good with no trace of evil. Evil is the existence of that which should not be. The source of all that exists would want only that which should be.6
Because God is perfect Love, God wanted to create so there would be more who would know the greatest good, the greatest joy, the joy of knowing God.
Again, this choice to create was all originally a simple and timeless knowledge and decision. But it became complex knowledge as God entered time and chose who to individually create, when and where to place each person, and what they would face in life.
So all in all, the theist has the simpler explanation for the universe. The theistic argument from design, to fully answer naturalism, ultimately needs to include an argument from simplicity.7
Notes
1. An interview on salon.com (accessed October 2019).
2. Cited in John Boslough, Stephen Hawking’s Universe (New York, Morrow, 1985), 121.
3. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York, Bantom Press, 1998), 144. This and the previous statement were likely made before Hawking’s more clearly agnostic and atheistic stages.
4. Robin Collins, “The Teleological Argument,” in W. L. Craig and J. P. Moreland (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 263–65.
5. Ibid., 202–81, ch. 4; Geraint Lewis and Luke Barnes, A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos (Cambridge University Press, 2016). See “The Scientific Evidence for God” for a discussion of temporally sequential or cyclic models of the multiverse.
6. The existence of evil in the world does not negate this insight. God’s allowance of evil would make God evil only if a greater good will not come of that evil. For the argument from the problem of evil to work it must be demonstrated that no such greater good will occur. See Dennis Jensen, Human Suffering and the Evil of Religion (Eugene, Or: Resource, 2018), part 1 for a more detailed argument against the problem of evil. See also the debate with Paul Doland on the problem of evil on this website.
7. The argument from simplicity is more thoroughly debated and discussed with philosophers Michael Tooley and Richard Swinburne in the article “The Simplicity Debate.”
Dennis Jensen, October 2019
