A Reasonable Little Question: A Formulation of the Fine-Tuning Argument

Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 6 (2019)
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Abstract

A new formulation of the Fine-Tuning Argument (FTA) for the existence of God is offered, which avoids a number of commonly raised objections. I argue that we can and should focus on the fundamental constants and initial conditions of the universe, and show how physics itself provides the probabilities that are needed by the argument. I explain how this formulation avoids a number of common objections, specifically the possibility of deeper physical laws, the multiverse, normalisability, whether God would fine-tune at all, whether the universe is too fine-tuned, and whether the likelihood of God creating a life-permitting universe is inscrutable.

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Author's Profile

Luke A. Barnes
Western Sydney University

References found in this work

The emperor’s new mind.Roger Penrose - 1989 - Oxford University Press.
The anthropic cosmological principle.John D. Barrow - 1986 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Frank J. Tipler.
Truth and probability.Frank Ramsey - 2010 - In Antony Eagle (ed.), Philosophy of Probability: Contemporary Readings. New York: Routledge. pp. 52-94.
After Physics.David Z. Albert - 2015 - Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Probability Theory. The Logic of Science.Edwin T. Jaynes - 2002 - Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Edited by G. Larry Bretthorst.

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