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shousa's avatar

This was a nice summary. The FTA is very interesting because it intersects between physics, philosophy, and probability (Bayes). The issue is, no one seems to have a good grasp of all three! So philosophers are not very good a physics and often misunderstand Bayes, while physicists are not very good a philosophy (physicists, in particular, are not good proabilists either).

While you raised some common objections, the FTA makes several implicit assumptions that can easily render the argument moot:

1) be an anti-realist about science (and math);

2) assume that the current laws of physics isn't terminal (we can come up with laws that explain the current laws etc. Eg string theory predicts these constants);

3) point that god's omnipotence conflicts with defining a probability space over god's actions (thus god doesn't actually predict an LPU if you want to use Bayes);

4) naturalism does not entail independent uniform priors over the parameters (since the property of randomness all but ensures that things don't follow a uniform, thus effectively begging the question against naturalism).

If we take all of this into account, the FTA is a very weak argument for god. Personally, because it intersects with so many fields, which by themselves takes years to learn, it preys on the incredulity of the reader. As a card-carrying member of the society of Bayesians, I think the argument is an invalid use of Bayes. And I've challenged proponents with my objections (eg Barnes) without any satisfactory response.

I'm happy to expound further on any specific point, if you're interested.

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