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

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

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Other things ruled out by the switch away from using an anthropic
principle to suggest design.

As I hinted at in my last email, I have been fighting against a form of
deisgn argument that *does not* rely on an anthropic principle any more. I
found that when I read other accounts dismissing intelligent design they
constantly hit home at this. As I wrote in my paper on p.4, the idea of
'the world is fitted to us, so it is designed' is clearly wrong. As I
noted on p.3 (and David admirably brought to life with his footballer
analogy), if you see the universe this way, it looks like a very bad or
unintelligent design indeed - most of it is horribly inhospitable to the
life-form you are saying it is designed for. So people who *do* hold
anthropic principles are reduced to saying things like there is an
ineffable plan for why humans shouldn't live on other planets. Very
unconvincing, and obviously not something I'd have a problem kicking down.

One of the two main original (at least, I haven't read them anywhere else)
points in my paper is the reformulation of the fine-tuning / modern
argument for design position. Rather than being anthropic, which it seemed
to me was really just a cheap way of beating the physicists who put this
forward, I reworded it in 'reverse', negative terms. It's not that the
universe is fitted to us, so is amazing. It's that it's bloody amazing it
exists in a moving state *at all*, if you look at how finely-balanced the
numbers are. And it being a moving thing is a necessary condition for life
(unless you are a dualist of the kind I note on p.7).

I will make this aspect of my argument clearer in the next draft, and
perhaps should draw out some consequences. If the argument I offer on
pp.3-7 holds, none of the following criticisms of fine-tuning apply any
more:

- The design doesn't look intelligent if it was supposed to help humans
- If we weren't here wondering about our origins, something else would be
- Anything else that relies on 'fittedness' as a weak concept.

I'd love to hear some views on that reformulation.

Rab.



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