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

["Bernie Doeser" <bernie@doeser.org>]

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Rab,

An excellent paper. In the past I too have begun an essay with strong
opinions, and by the end have convinced myself I was wrong at the outset.
Isn't philosophy wonderful. I find that one never knows where a
philosophical discussion will lead, except to firmer ground.

Now some comments.

You express a concern that we may damage our environment, which seems at
odds to me to a universe so carefully designed. If I could construct a
universe to a very narrow design specification, then I would expect I could
make it resilient to a minor species of bipedal mammals. This avenue of
thought leads me to the conclusion that humans and their planet are pretty
irrelevant in the scheme of things. I can't see the intelligent designer
having crafted the universe for humans, as we'd have more planets suitable
for organic life. The relative paucity of human life in the galaxy, or of
life in general, leads me to think that the intelligent designer was "fond
of dark matter" as this constitutes the bulk of our galaxy. My quotation
marks indicate a reference to Darwin (and I apologise if I misquote him) who
when asked what his studies had taught him about god, replied that "he was
inordinately fond of beetles" as beetles were the most prevalent species on
the planet. I rather think of us as a speck of mould on the edge of a cheese
sandwich thinking how amazing that conditions are just right for our
existence, the creator made this cheese sandwich just to provide us with a
perfect home ....

The acceptance of Intelligent Design, even for "fine-tuning" implies an
acceptance of a creator. To turn a design into reality one needs a creator
to create mass, energy, gravity, magnetism etc. I think all atheists find it
really difficult to accept the concept of a creator. We then get into the
argument of who created the creator, has the universe existed for ever, if
not what was there before the universe .... Indeed if the designer is
intelligent, then they have learned their trade of universe construction,
presumably through experimentation, and perhaps we are just another
(failed?) experiment. This theory requires earlier trial universes to have
been constructed and for an intelligent designer to have been at work for a
very long time. The point I am making here is that Ockhams razor only
favours fine-tuning if one narrows down one's scope of necessary
assumptions. Once one widens them then the ID/FT theory becomes more
complex. By the way I do not like the term "abduction", it makes me think of
the X-Files.

The arguments at the centre of this debate were covered in Martin Rees's
book "Just Six Numbers" and as I recall adjustments to these numbers would
lead to quite different universes, but not necessarily ones which did not
support some form of life, though Spock might describe it as "Life Jim, but
not as we know it" (Star Trek). According to Rees it would be quite possible
for two gas clouds to be having a similar discussion as ours.... Just think
Cynthia, if Epsilon were only one percent higher, then we'd be burned to
death by hot lumps of gas we've postulated might exist and we've called
stars.

The fundamental problem is that we only have one universe and in trying to
formulate a theory from only one case we can extrapolate our debate in
pretty much any direction.

Nevertheless I think your key point - that ID should be taught in schools
still stands, even if the theory is contentious. We should be teaching
children the different thoughts on how the universe began, showing them the
strengths and weaknesses of each theory. By doing this we shall hopefully
stimulate them to accept that in truth no one knows how or why the universe
began, but that we can critically examine the alternative theories and we
can have our favourite, but accept that it is just a favourite.


Bernie Doeser
Sandiway, Cheshire, UK.






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