Fine-Tuning Objection: Why Think God Would Create a Life-Permitting Universe?
One of the objections to the fine-tuning argument (FTA) is that theists have no more reason to think God would create a life-permitting universe than not; hence no reason to think FTA establishes theism. This objection doesn’t match intuition. Surely, the natural epistemic pull of the discovery of fine-tuning is that God (or some “super-intellect” as Hoyle called it) is far more probably the explanation than mere happenstance, if only because God would see the value in creating creatures like us which depend upon fine-tuning, and that is something God would want to create and (being omnipotent, etc.) easily could create.
How high should that expectation be? That’s a fair question. Personally, I think from intuition alone, it’s more than 50%. However, Michael Rota shows you could set that expectation extremely (in fact, preposterously) low and still be virtually certain in God’s existence from the probabilistic force of fine-tuning in favor of theism. This is a nice approach, but it concedes far too much.
I believe this objection — call it, the divine inscrutability objection — to FTA highlights the problem of just doing contemporary philosophy of religion – namely, worldview comparison – apart from traditional metaphysics. Here is something many in the worldview debate seem to be forgetting, or at least failing to consider: that The Good is naturally self-diffusive.
This principle – often known as the Dionysian principle – claims that The Good naturally seeks to communicate itself, diffuse itself, and draw things into union with itself. This principle is not something I’m going to defend here (see this book for that), except to suggest it is intuitively obvious and has a strong philosophical tradition behind it. In fact, if anything, the Dionysian principle was seen as too strong, at various points, that it might lead to theological problems in Christianity – namely, necessary emanation. This is perhaps why Aquinas felt the need to “soften” the Dionysian principle with respect to God, moving its emphasis from efficient to final causality – The Good as always, necessarily attractive, rather than productive. Put that aside, an issue for another time.
The point for now is that given this diffusiveness principle, that God would create a life-permitting universe, and one that like ours with an incredible variety of entities (maybe even a multiverse!), is strongly expected. Moreover, if we grant that man is a microcosm within the macrocosm (since man is where the lower and higher aspects of being, from the mineral to the angelic, are “concentrated”) then of course God is going to bring about beings like if God brings about anything at all, because we are something of a creative culmination of extreme value and importance in the hierarchy of being. Traditional metaphysics and philosophical anthropology makes all this clear, but they are points often hugely neglected in contemporary philosophy of religion circles.
Ultimately, I suggest, the question isn’t whether it’s probable that God would create beings like us, but whether God could have refrained from creating beings us like. One worries, given everything just laid out, if it simply isn’t a matter of entailment. If so, then theism predicts a life-permitting universe as perfectly as anything could. But then we encounter tensions elsewhere, including with Christian commitments of creation being a truly free act on God’s part.
There are at least two solutions to this, either of which leaves enough intact to overcome the divine inscrutability objection. One could continue along the path of Aquinas, OR (my preferred approach) one could follow W. Norris Clarke and others and argue that God was indeed motivated necessary BY HIS NATURE to eternal generation – and boom, there’s the trinity (see an explication of this in Clarke’s Explorations in Metaphysics). From there, that the Trinity so perfectly satisfies the diffusiveness principle that anything beyond that is sheer (free) gratuitous surplus. I like this. It seems right, and shows how Christianity has a unique resource to solve problems other theological systems lack.
PS - Let it be noted that Rota himself offers a different but cogent response to the divine inscrutability objection in Contemporary Arguments in Natural Theology.