Surprised by Meaning

Author:McGrath, Alister [McGrath, Alister]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780664236922
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Published: 2011-04-12T16:00:00+00:00

The observation of anthropic phenomena is thus situated within a long tradition of theological and metaphysical reflection on God as an explanation of the universe. It holds that the general phenomenon of fine-tuning is consonant with Christian belief in a creator God, arguing that the nature of things is such that the most appropriate outcome for a natural theology is to demonstrate that observation of the natural world furnishes conceptual resonance with the Christian vision of God, but not deductive proof of that vision. On this approach, theism offers the best “empirical fit” of the various theories which set out to account for anthropic phenomena. Yet it must be emphasized that Christian theology has never seen itself as charged with the task of inventing an explanation for these observations; rather, they fit within, and resonate with, an existing way of thinking, which proves capable of satisfactorily incorporating such observations.

God, then, unquestionably represents a plausible explanation of anthropic phenomena. But is this the best explanation? We can’t be sure. Alternative perspectives certainly exist. For example, some argue that apparent cosmic fine-tuning is nothing more than an interesting happenstance, a delightful fluke. The fundamental constants in question had to have some value—so why not these values? They need possess no further significance. To give an example: the population of the United States of America is a bit over 300 million. There is only one president. The odds of any one American becoming president are thus about one in three hundred million. But so what? Someone has to be president. It may be highly improbable that any given individual should be president, but it is a certainty that someone will be.

Yet this presidential analogy is clearly invalid. The rules of the game are that somebody has to be president of the United States. But the universe didn’t have to come into being. It’s the fact that it’s here, as much as the fact that it is highly improbable, which calls out for explanation. In any case, the “biofriendliness” we observe in the universe is far in excess of what is needed to give rise to a few observers like us. If it were the result of random processes, we might expect the observed universe to be minimally rather than optimally biofriendly. But the degree of biofriendliness seems to exceed that in many ways.

Another approach has generated considerable interest: the multiverse. On this view, a multiplicity of universes exist, so that the one we inhabit is an inevitability. We happen to live in a universe with these biologically friendly properties; we do not observe other universes, where these conditions do not pertain. Our insights are restricted by observation-selection effects, which means that our location within a biophilic universe inclines us to propose that the entire cosmos possesses such properties, when in fact other universes will exist which are inimical to life. Indeed, such biophobic universes are predicted to be the norm. We happen to exist in an exceptional universe. On this model, our observable

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