Abstract
Many theists have argued that contemporary physics provides evidence for the existence of God, insofar as the fundamental laws of nature display evidence of having been fine-tuned to allow for the emergence of biological life. (See, e.g., the works of Stephen Barr, Robin Collins, Paul Davies, John Leslie, Richard Swinburne, etc.) But some have objected that this evidence needs to be weighed against the conflicting evidence that biological life is a relatively late phenomenon in the universe. For if God really wanted the universe to contain life (esp. intelligent life), such that He specifically designed its laws with this in mind, why would He have set things up in such a way that it took billions of years for life to appear? One can employ this general concern to formulate an argument against intelligent design. In this paper I critically evaluate some existing theistic solutions to this sort of argument, and also propose several new lines of reply.
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Notes
Collins (2006, p. 342) states this idea nicely: ‘One might also expect nature to reflect other attributes of God: God’s eternity and infinity, and God’s mysteriousness. Accordingly, theists should not be surprised that the universe is very old and vast, and perhaps even infinitely large as some cosmologists speculate. This is why, as I have emphasized elsewhere, theists should not be opposed to new cosmic speculation, particularly that arising out of inflationary cosmology, in which our universe is one of an incredibly large if not infinite number of universes generated by some physical process. Although a finite, single universe is certainly compatible with God’s infinite creativity, an infinitely a large universe and/or multiverse arguably makes even more sense from a theistic perspective.’ Similarly, Barr (2003, p. 159) writes: ‘Another theme running through the Bible is that the greatness and majesty which we see in the physical universe show forth God’s own greatness and majesty…. In the fifteenth century, indeed, the theologian Nicolas of Cusa suggested that the universe might be infinite in size precisely because he thought that such a universe would better reflect the infinity of its creator.’
Ward (2006, pp. 15–16) for instance writes: ‘For anyone who believes in a creator God can affirm that the cosmos is created so that God can enjoy its beauty. After all, theists believe that the cosmos is a product of the divine mind, so its creation can be compared to the work of a supreme artist, enjoyable and worthwhile for its own sake, without any reference to possible finite persons at all. It would not matter if there were never any human beings at all. The universe could still have a point, and that point would be its expression of the power and wisdom of the creator, and God’s enjoyment both of the process of creating and of the created universe itself…. If there is a God, the universe has a point, as the creative expression of the master creator, and the object of divine delight.’
The claim that goodness is entailed by mere being is a staple of Scholastic philosophy; see for instance Clarke and Norris (2001). For a recent defence of the idea by an analytic philosopher, see Davison (2012). He rightly points out that this axiological tenet could help defuse certain versions of the scale argument for atheism (2012, pp. 122–127).
See Everitt (2004, ch. 11) for a more developed critique of the inscrutability reply to scale arguments.
My thanks to an anonymous referee for this point.
Note that an advocate of divine temporality (who maintains that God is in some sense in time rather than transcending it) could employ an analogous point, provided it could be argued that God’s subjective experience of time is exceedingly different from our own. My thanks to Richard Swinburne for raising this point in conversation.
For further development of that criticism, and some related theological objections, see Collins (2009b, pp. 244–246).
My thanks to a referee for this helpful observation.
See Koperski (2015, ch. 3) for an accessible entry point to both the relevant metaphysics and physics.
Philipse (2012, p. 187) seems to treat temporal delay and spatial isolation as of roughly equivalent import when he writes that ‘science has revealed the vastness of the universe, both in time and in space. Compared to the stretch of time between the Big Bang and the present moment, human life on earth emerged only in the last microsecond, so to say…. Furthermore, most planets are inhospitable to human life…. Even if there were humans on other planets than Earth, the number of planets on which human life exists would be negligible compared to the total number of planets in the universe. Hence, saying that the universe is fine-tuned for human life in particular seems to be as absurd, as would be the claim put forward by a little lonely fly in the palace of Versailles that this place was construct especially for it.’
Ross (2008, pp. 57–78) seems to be of this view.
Of course, how ‘risk’ is cashed out here will vary depending on one’s views concerning divine foreknowledge, human freedom, future contingents, and God’s relationship to time. I’m hoping the argument of this sub-section will be compatible with a range of perspectives on these matters (though presumably not all).
But who knows: there may be the odd atheist reader out there with a soft spot for angels.
A referee rightly points out here that someone wishing to employ strategy (D) from the standpoint of mere theism, rather than a particular religious tradition, would have to present supplementary arguments for the likelihood that God would create angels—otherwise, (D) would just seem ad hoc.
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Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2016 conference of the Canadian Centre for Scholarship and the Christian Faith (held at Concordia University of Edmonton), and at the 2016 conference of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. I would like to thank all those in attendance for their helpful comments and questions. My thanks also to several anonymous referees at Sophia for their valuable input.
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Dumsday, T. Does a Delayed Origin for Biological Life Count as Evidence Against the Existence of God?. SOPHIA 56, 649–669 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-017-0574-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-017-0574-0