Re: Fine Tuned Intelligent Design - should it be taught in schools?

[Robert Charleston <rc3673@student.open.ac.uk>]

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David and Hilary have put forward a concern (voiced brilliantly - as ever
- by the inestimable Douglas Adams) that we need to be wary of anthropic
explanations for the universe as they can be taken to imply that we can do
what we want to that universe. That it is somehow 'ours', since it was
designed for us. This is the 'puddle' argument from Adams.

There are three things I'd like to say in return. The first is that I
wholeheartedly agree with the worry that establishing some sort of
'ownership' concept of our environment, and so licensing ourselves to do
whatever we want would be naive, shortsighted, perhaps even morally (as
well as practically) wrong. I tend towards an 'intrinsic value' position
of the kind often associated with 'deep green' environmentalism. This
means I tend to think not just that the environment is a lot less
resilient to abuse, at least if we want it to support our form of life,
than many people assumed in the 19th century for example; but also that
perhaps destroying the world around us is committing a moral
transgression. So I would be very worried indeed if my position on
fine-tuning supported a position that promoted such a worldview.

Second, fortunately I think my version of the fine-tuning argument
completely eliminates the anthropic principle, focussing on what states of
the universe preclude *all* forms of life, not just us (detailed on pp.4-7
of my paper). The design-advocate I am trying to argue against is a lot
more sophisticated than Adams' puddle. He notes that the hole he lives in
could equally support puddles of many other different liquids. That the
'puddleness' designed for does not have to be implemented in the kind of
puddle he is. So it might not be too good an idea to start burning a lot
of fossil fuels, playing with acids etc., as the hole may well be made
uninhabitable for his kind of puddle. The fittedness of hole and puddle is
no longer what is driving the idea of design. It is the possibility of
holes - the very existence of matter and form - which is the amazing
thing. Without the anthropic principle of me-centredness, of
personal-fittedness, thinking of a designer no longer implies that we are
privileged beyond the
 very first initial conditions of our own existence. In fact, we are made
more aware of the environmental knife-edge on which we live. I think my
own argument here actually plays to Adams' concern even more than the
strict materialism he advocated in many of his talks and essays.

Third, I am not sure that older arguments for design ever really
encouraged the point of view Adams is stereotyping. The only thing I can
think of is the comment in Genesis about Man being given command of nature
(naming the animals, etc). But a) Design doesn't have to imply this
relation - in fact it really, really means the opposite in many religions,
that the environment - as a designed, holy thing - has equal status to
man; and b) even in Christianity there is a long tradition of seeing
environmental concern and activism as a religious duty - think Adam and
Eve as the gardeners of Eden in Milton's Paradise Lost (Books 1 and 2, I
seem to remember). I don't think environmental arrogance and destruction
are specificially or particularly a product of design, or even religion.
Materialism, commercialism, hedonism, ethical egoism: all are designer-
and indeed god-less, but very bad for the environment.

What do you think?

Rab.



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