Faith and Philosophy

Volume 22, Issue 5, 2005

Cosmology and Theology

PRIOR PROBABILITIES IN THE ARGUMENT FROM FINE-TUNING

Theism is a far simpler hypothesis, and so a priori more probably true, than naturalism, understood as the hypothesis that the existence of this law-governed universe has no explanation. Theism postulates only one entity (God) with very simple properties, whereas naturalism has to postulate either innumerable entities all having the same properties, or one very complicated entity with the power to produce the former. If theism is true, it is moderately probable that God would create humanoid beings and so humanoid bodies; but laws of nature would have to have very special properties if they are to bring about the existencne of humaoid bodies. Given laws of the present form (quantum theory with the Pauli principle and the four forces), the constants of the laws and variables of the boundary conditions of the universe would need to be extremely fine-tuned; and no simpler set of laws would allow the existence of humanoid bodies at all. So the evidence of the existence of humanoid bodies adds further to the probability of theismas against naturalism.