The Fine-Tuning Fantasy: A Far-Fetched Chain of Divine DesignNyegosh Dube

There is strong evidence that a supernatural cosmic designer created the universe, and created it in such a way that life could flourish. This is the bold claim of the fine-tuning argument which in recent years has come to the fore as part of an allegedly science-based defense of theism. Fine-tuning appears to be a formidable argument, relying on certain mathematical truths about the universe. Even self-styled “non-theist” Michael Shermer, a Scientific American columnist and writer, calls this “the best scientific argument that creationists and Intelligent Design theorists have in their arsenal”.1 But, in fact, it is fundamentally flawed in ways going beyond what Shermer and others have shown in their counterarguments. Once we consider the broader picture of what fine-tuning entails, the argument’s weaknesses are substantially magnified. Fine-tuning is yet another twist in the ancient argument from design and yet again the notion of a divine designer proves to be out of tune with reality and reason.

Tuning into the DebateAt this early stage, a brief outline of the subject may be useful. Fine-tuning is concerned with a set of physical constants that were fixed in place during the Big Bang, perhaps at the end of “cosmic inflation” when the embryonic universe underwent a mind-boggling expansion in a miniscule fraction of a second. The values of these constants, expressed primarily as ratios, are claimed to be so precisely calibrated that if any of them were more than minimally different, the universe as we know it – and life as we know it – could not exist. Change one value and the universe collapses before any stars can form, change another and it consists only of hydrogen: either way there is no stellar nucleosynthesis producing the “interesting chemistry” necessary for life.

Probably the best known description of the constants is astrophysicist Martin Rees’ “six numbers”2 which Richard Dawkins discusses in The God Delusion. These numbers are the “recipe” for the universe, says Rees, although he favors a non-theistic explanation for fine-tuning – and, of course, so does Dawkins. Various other scientists have also turned their attention to the fine-tuned constants, either to argue they point to a divine designer or to challenge this argument. Oddly enough, everyone seems to have a different list. Atheist physicist Lee Smolin refers to 15 parameters.3 Erstwhile astronomer Hugh Ross, an Old Earth creationist, invokes no less than 34 to make his case, as if the sheer quantity of constants guarantees the quality of his argumentation!4

One of the foremost Christian proponents of the fine-tuning argument, theologian William Lane Craig, speaks of a “conspiracy of initial conditions that must be fine-tuned to a degree that is literally incomprehensible and incalculable”.5 These initial conditions could not have been a coincidence. According to him and other theists who use this argument, there was indeed a divine Fine-Tuner. Craig cites the noted physicists Stephen Hawking, Paul Davies and Roger Penrose to illustrate the degree of fine-tuning involved. (He fails to mention the minor fact that none of them are theists!)6 Incidentally, he outdoes Ross, maintaining there are 50 quantities and constants that need to be fine-tuned. Undoubtedly one day an even more ambitious theist will bless us with even more constants!

The “fine-tunists” speak of a life-permitting universe, one that was deliberately made to be so by the Fine-Tuner. But for them, a life-permitting universe was not the divine designer’s ultimate goal; no, the ultimate purpose of fine-tuning was to give rise to the human race. The universe has a purpose: the purpose is us.7

Quite a few non-theist scientists and science writers have responded to this argument. I’ve already mentioned Shermer, Dawkins, Rees, and Smolin. Others include physicists Victor Stenger, Steven Weinberg, Leonard Susskind, and Sean Carroll.8 Hawking too, although he sometimes comes across as a fence-sitter in the God debate, has expressed serious doubts: he finds it “very hard to believe” that “this whole vast construction exists simply for our sake”.9 Critics of theistic fine-tuning propose alternative explanations and make certain observations:

Our universe may be part of a multiverse containing a vast array of other universes, each of whose fundamental constants may have values different from ours. Some universes might be life-permitting, others not. Ours happens to be biofriendly.

The Big Bang that created our universe may only be the latest in an infinite chain of big bangs. Ours happened to produce constants with values supportive of life (at least on one planet).

Our universe could be part of a Darwinian multiverse where each universe is created in a black hole in a “parent” universe. Each “offspring” has constants whose values randomly differ by a small degree from its parent’s. And since a “biofriendly universe is also a black-hole-friendly universe”, biofriendly ones come to predominate.10

The values may have frozen, as it were, at the end of cosmic inflation when temperatures dropped dramatically. Rees uses the analogy of ice crystal patterns that form when water freezes.11 Hence, the specific values could be just accidental, or as Davies puts it, “frozen relics from the formation of the universe.”12

Other values may not be possible, just as there is only one value for the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Someday a unified “Theory of Everything” may be formulated explaining why this is so.

The values can in fact be varied and still yield a life-permitting universe. Computer simulations run by Stenger show that long-lived stars producing heavy elements essential for life can be generated even within a broad range of values.

While a different set of values may not enable life as we know it, other forms of life adapted to this set of values may indeed be possible.

If the universe is fine-tuned for human life, it is equally fine-tuned for all the other forms of life we find on Earth, including viruses and bacteria deadly to humans.

Most of our universe is actually hostile to life and almost all matter in the universe is lifeless. To talk about a life-permitting universe, and particularly about fine-tuning as if the purpose was to enable human life, is far off the mark.

As we see, good naturalistic explanations are proposed for the fine-tuning. Certainly, any of them makes more sense than the God hypothesis which is a huge leap into the unknown without any scientific basis. Even the multiverse hypothesis, while perhaps scientifically unprovable given that we are locked into our universe, merely posits a multiplicity of a known object, a universe.

However, the problem with the idea of fine-tuning goes far beyond certain physical constants set during the Big Bang which then determined the rate of expansion, structure, and lifespan of the universe. For how could the divine Fine-Tuner have ensured that the human race would emerge as a result of the creation event? This is the key question. Was it enough just to frontload the creation process, i.e. set the constants and let things unfold? A massive amount of material emerged from the Big Bang. How do you get from all this material spread over a vast area to the dawn of mankind on a small speck of a planet?

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I will argue that deliberate fine-tuning entails a chain of follow-up interventions long after this initial setting of the dials, and that theists need to show that these interventions did take place and were the handiwork of a Fine-Tuner. But not only that, they need to explain how the Fine-Tuner put this whole chain of events in motion and how he designed it in the first place. If they cannot do this, divine fine-tuning turns out to be nothing but a fantasy created by theists desperate to dress up their pre-existing religious beliefs in scientific clothing.

How to Create Mankind in a Few Easy StepsLet us look at some of the major actions that the presumed Fine-Tuner (FT) would have had to undertake to bring about his desired objective, the human race. First of all, by setting the constants, what did he achieve? Basically, he established the necessary conditions: a universe with several generations of stars capable of producing heavier elements and, by going supernova, spewing giant molecular clouds laden with these elements into the cosmos, each stellar generation enriching the next. Certainly, this is no mean achievement and I salute it. Triggering the Big Bang and fine-tuning the constants led to roughly 9 billion years of cosmic development – major steps like formation of the first atoms, aggregation of matter as expansion magnified tiny density irregularities, condensation of mammoth gas clouds into proto-galaxies and the first stars. But still, once you have brought about a universe where enriched stars are being formed, how do you get to your ultimate objective? It appears Big Bang fine-tuning can only get you so far before you have to act again.

The Fine-Tuner had a few tasks in front of him once these metal-enriched megaclouds (or solar nebulas) began to coalesce into third-generation stars (like our Sun):

First, from among the billions of galaxies, he had to identify those with third-generation solar nebulas in their respective habitable zones, where solar systems with a sufficiently high level of heavy elements – essential for a planet like Earth and its life forms – could safely develop.

Second, as these solar nebulas contracted and flattened out into protoplanetary disks (with a protostar in the center), he had to identify those where after formation of the protostar, the leftover material was coalescing into planets.

Third, from these embryonic solar systems, he had to pinpoint those with non-gaseous planets of the right mass and rich in elements located in the right orbital zone (the “Goldilocks zone”) not too close and not too far from their respective stars.

Now, why would the FT have needed to identify these solar nebulas, disks, and planets? He could have just continued to let things unfold and assumed that life – and then intelligent life – would emerge somewhere in his universe. Well, maybe, but then a nagging question arises: could he have been 100% sure that life would evolve? And, if let’s say the answer was yes, could he have been absolutely certain that intelligent life would evolve? Yes, he could have taken a chance, but surely if he was intent on creating a race of intelligent Fine-Tuner-worshipping beings, he would not have chosen to gamble. Hence the need for these three steps. He had to find a planet where he could trigger or at least intervene in an ongoing life-evolutionary process to ensure the final goal is reached: Homo sapiens sapiens.

And then, backtracking a little, another nagging question arises: could the FT have taken a chance and assumed that out of x number of protoplanetary disks, a solar system would emerge with the right type of planet in the right orbital zone? Yes, if you have a million disks, the chances are high that at least one if not many more such solar systems would emerge. But still, could he really take a chance? A little bit of intervention to make sure the desired type of

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solar system emerged would not have taxed the FT too much. I will assume that no intervention before this point would have been necessary as his excellent job of fine-tuning would have taken care of all prior steps – although naturally he would have had to plan things quite well, so that the fine-tuning produced the desired results.

Theists, of course, don’t have a problem with divine intervention, but they might counter that the Fine-Tuner can foresee the future, thus he could see how everything in the universe would turn out. In that case, he would have needed to intervene only if he foresaw that no intelligent FT-worshipping life would evolve, or no Goldilocks-planet-bearing solar system would arise. But this notion poses a serious problem: If he intervened, then the humanless future he first foresaw will never have happened, hence does not belong to the real landscape of time, and therefore he could not have foreseen it. It seems a logical impossibility. And even the FT cannot do things that are logically impossible, as theologian Richard Swinburne concedes.13 So, to guarantee that he achieved his goal, he would have had to intervene in one or both of the ways I have mentioned.

While ensuring the birth of a Goldilocks planet should have been fairly easy, the creation of the human race is a more complicated matter. Whether the FT needed to start the evolution process from scratch or began to intervene at a later point, he would have had to keep his hand on the evolutionary steering wheel. However, any divine guidance of evolution fundamentally contradicts the very essence of evolution, namely the appearance of random incremental variations or mutations which are either weeded out or spread through natural selection in response to environmental conditions (predators, climate, terrain, food supply, etc). As Richard Dawkins points out: “For Darwin, any evolution that had to be helped over the jumps by God was not evolution at all.”14 Also essential to evolution is its open-endedness: evolution has no goal, no purpose. But the Fine-Tuner definitely did. While he could have sat back and just allowed evolution to unfold freely, he had no guarantee of where the process would lead.

1 Michael Shermer, Why Darwin Matters, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2006 (paperback), p. 54.2 See: Martin Rees, Just Six Numbers, Basic Books, New York, 2000.3 Lee Smolin, “Darwinism All the Way Down”, in Intelligent Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement, Vintage Books, New York, 2006, p. 157.4 “Evidence for the Fine-Tuning of the Universe”, http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/designun.html, taken from Hugh Ross, Big Bang Refined by Fire, Reasons to Believe, Pasadena CA, 1998.5 William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, God? A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist, Oxford University Press, New York, 2004, p. 9.6 I should point out that while Paul Davies does see purpose in the universe, he rejects the notion of divine creation: “Many people want to find God in the creation of the universe, in the big bang that started it all off. They imagine a superbeing who…presses a metaphysical button and produces a huge explosion. I believe this image is entirely misconceived.” http://aca.mq.edu.au/PaulDavies/prize_address.htm7 I might add that fine-tuning is at the heart of the much-discussed “anthropic principle” which states the obvious (we wouldn’t exist if the conditions for our existence were absent) and in its strong form states the absurd (these conditions were deliberately set up by a higher intelligence).8 See the following: Victor Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis, Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY, 2007; Steven Weinberg, “A Designer Universe”, http://www.physlink.com/Education/essay_weinberg.cfm; Leonard Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design, Back Bay Books, New York, 2006; Sean Carroll, “Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists”, http://preposterousuniverse.com/writings/nd-paper9 Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time: The Updated and Expanded Tenth Anniversary Edition, Bantam Books, 1998, p. 130.10 Smolin, p. 164.11 Rees, p. 169.12 Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life?, Penguin Books, 2007, p. 175.13 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Houghton Mifflin, Boston & New York, 2006, p. 149.14 Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, W.W. Norton, New York, 1996 edition, p. 249.

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Would multicellular organisms arise? Would vertebrates appear? Would any fish change to tetrapods and make the transition to land? Would mammals evolve out of reptiles? Would the genus Australopithecus lead to the genus Homo and finally to us? The only way to guarantee our emergence was to intervene at many key points. But if such intervention did take place, where’s the evidence?15

The rise of the human race was preceded by a 160 million-year epoch when dinosaurs dominated the Earth. Then about 65 million years ago, a large meteor most likely hit the planet, leading to their extinction and the emergence of larger mammals and eventually hominids. Had this meteor not struck, it’s quite possible, if not probable, that hominids might never have evolved. This means the FT had to make sure this cataclysm took place! How did he do this? Either he had to violate the laws of physics and direct that meteor towards the Earth or he had to orchestrate the meteor strike at the outset. The latter would mean pre-programming of an unimaginable degree, going far beyond fine-tuning of the constants. Because surely such “limited” fine-tuning could not by itself have guaranteed that one day a particular meteor would crash into the Yucatan Peninsula. But what was the point of first letting dinosaurs come into being and flourish for 160 million years and then wiping them out with a meteor? And even if we accept the alternative theory that noxious gases from the Deccan Traps (in present-day central India) prior to the putative meteor strike played a key role, the FT’s intervention was still required to trigger the release of these gases.

This is a good point to review where things stand:

If any particular action essential to achieving the FT’s ultimate goal that could not have been achieved simply by setting the six (or 34 or more) magic numbers was actually pre-programmed or frontloaded at the time of the Big Bang, it would mean that trillions of movements of atoms or groups of atoms, if not all movements, starting from the Big Bang and continuing for billions of years, were pre-planned. But this contradicts the notion of laws of physics – including any fine-tuning of fundamental constants. Christian geneticist Francis Collins says that the FT could have activated evolution on Earth “at the moment of the creation of the universe”.16 If so, this means there are no autonomous laws of nature, everything is pre-programmed.

Perhaps, instead of such a wholesale pre-emption of the laws of physics, we have selective intervention by the FT after the point I have indicated, at around the 9 billion-year mark, i.e. after the initial fine-tuning has run its course (in terms of generating intelligent life). But the prime occurrence of such intervention in pursuit of the FT’s primary goal, namely in the evolution process, makes “a nonsense of the central point of evolution”.17 And how exactly did the Fine-Tuner intervene? In other words, how did he move atoms and other objects around, and how did he act upon living organisms and beings during the evolution process? No theist can answer this. And, again, what is the evidence for such selective interventions? How can theists prove that what happened didn’t happen without any intervention?

15 Creationists of course reject evolution completely, but then they should reject fine-tuning too since it set up a 9-billion-year evolutionary process that led to the formation of our solar system. Why didn’t the Fine-Tuner resort to creationism in this process as well?16 “God vs. Science”, TIME Magazine (US edition), November 13, 2006, p. 52. This article features a debate between Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins.17 Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, p. 249.

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As we have seen, fine-tuning by the FT was a necessary but not sufficient condition for achieving his primary objective. But then we have to ask: Why would the cosmic designer need to create a vast, mostly lifeless and non-life-permitting universe in order to generate intelligent life on one little planet?18 Why did he fill the universe with so much “excess baggage”? Besides, it took billions of years after the Big Bang for human beings to emerge. So, there is also excess baggage in terms of time. Surely he could have found a much more efficient way to do this, if that was his main goal – unless he wanted to keep a small group of humans employed as astronomers, astrophysicists, evolutionary biologists, and paleontologists!

Of course, billions of years and probably a fair number of stars were required for stellar nucleosynthesis to produce the essential ingredients for life on our planet. Martin Rees writes that we would not exist if the universe weren’t so vast. But surely, a universe of 100 billion galaxies was not needed to produce one planet supporting intelligent life. Unless I’m missing something, Rees doesn’t really explain why so many were necessary. After all, our solar system resulted from activities within just one galaxy. I think Victor Stenger is right to speak of “the enormous waste of matter”. He observes that “96 percent of the mass of the universe is not even of the type of matter associated with life”.19 Sean Carroll notes both the superfluous vastness of the universe and the “pointless duplication” of elementary particles from the viewpoint of life.20 Dawkins also notes the “extraordinarily roundabout way” that the FT went about creating intelligent life.21 And I have already quoted Hawking on this question.

What evolution clearly shows is that life on Earth adapts to the environment it finds itself in. The universe was not somehow designed to enable life; rather, life arose very slowly in very difficult conditions through evolutionary adaption. The universe is life-permitting only in the sense that life is enabled somewhere in the universe or maybe some places. Hence, the fine-tuning argument is a deeply flawed Earth- and human-centric way of looking at the universe. We are not the centre of creation, but only a tiny part of it.

A Journey into the Mind of the Fine-TunerI have examined the fundamental question of how we get from Big Bang fine-tuning to the emergence of the human race. But now, even more fundamental questions need to be asked. First of all, how exactly did the Fine-Tuner set off the creation process and set the constants that shaped the universe? If X is posited as the cause of Y, then it has to be shown how X caused Y, otherwise we can doubt if X is indeed the cause, and therefore if X even exists. How did he create the initial micro-embryo universe that inflated so dramatically? Theists can “explain” things by saying the FT carried out all the various steps that inflationary cosmology theorizes – as they do about much else. For example, they can say he set the constants at the end of cosmic inflation after he separated the four fundamental forces (gravitation, the strong and weak forces, and electromagnetism). But by giving him credit they are simply piggybacking on what astrophysics has learned and theorized. And still, they are not explaining how the FT actually did all this – because they really don’t have a clue about him and simply pre-suppose his existence. It all seems to come down to a Samantha-like twitch of the divine nose! The cosmic designer as cosmic witch /warlock extraordinaire.22

18 Some theists might argue that the FT may have created intelligent life on thousands of other planets in thousands of galaxies. But even so, all the other questions and objections raised in this article still apply.19 Stenger, p. 157.20 Carroll, p. 921 “God vs. Science”, TIME Magazine, p. 52.

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A more general question also needs to be asked: If the Fine-Tuner exists outside the realm of the physical world, as a transcendental being, how did he create the physical world? Furthermore, how can a supernatural being create energy ex nihilo? Could he just will it into existence? That question can be asked about any of his actions in the physical world, including the types of selective intervention discussed above at length. If the answer is yes, that still begs the question of how he could accomplish such feats through willpower alone.

According to astrophysicist Alan Guth, who first developed inflation theory, “a small patch of the early universe somehow came to be in a false vacuum state”.23 This patch was part of the “quantum vacuum”, a void which was in fact seething with latent energy. A random fluctuation in this void may have created a “bubble of false vacuum” that inflated exponentially. If we accept this notion, we need to ask if the vacuum itself was created by the Fine-Tuner prior to his creating the universe. Did he simply will it into existence? Or is the vacuum just a part of the Fine-Tuner? If this is the case, or if in any other way the energy unleashed by the creation process was drawn from the FT’s own immense energy, he is not a supernatural being – for then, what is the distinction between natural and supernatural?

But, alas for the fine-tunists, who can’t imagine a universe without a cosmic designer and omnipotent paternal ruler, the problems don’t end there. It’s time to look into the mind of the Fine-Tuner and consider what is entailed in conceiving a universe. I’m naturally making the assumption that the FT, being the supreme intelligence that rules the universe, has a mind or perhaps is a mind – and one of immense capacity. To conceive and design a universe, you need to think, and to think you need a mind, or need to be a mind. The FT as a transcendent, supernatural being, is usually considered to exist outside both space and time, space-time being a feature of our physical world created by him through the Big Bang. But how can the FT think if he is timeless? Without time, there can be no beginning and no end to the thought and design process, hence no thought or design can be initiated or completed. Moreover, how could he carry out his cosmic design? He would have had to be the cause and the universe the effect. But a cause-effect sequence entails time. And if he is a part of space-time, he could not have created it.

There is another problem with the Fine-Tuner’s mind. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia (CE), the cosmic designer is infinite in every way.24 Oddly enough, this infinitude does not include spatial and temporal dimensions, since he is outside space-time. But there is a way for him to sneak in: he is also supposed to be “omnipresent”, and acts freely within space and time, as we saw in the whole process from the Big Bang onwards. The FT’s infinitude, especially his omniscience and his omnipresence, necessitates an infinite mind. But can an infinite mind think? Can an infinite mind function as a single entity or organism with either a central hub or a decentralized internet-like grid? I think this is doubtful, aside from the question of whether a mind can exist without a physical brain of some sort. An infinite “mind” could contain an infinite number of autonomous finite thinking entities, but then we are no longer talking about one being. The CE lists the unity of the cosmic designer as his second main attribute after infinity. For all monotheistic religions, there is only one such being.

22 For those not familiar with 1960s US television shows, Samantha was a character in the series “Bewitched”, a witch married to an ordinary mortal who could do all sorts of things by the mere twitch of her nose.23 Alan Guth, “Inflation and the New Era of High-Precision Cosmology”, MIT Physics Annual 2002, p. 33, http://web.mit.edu/physics/alumniandfriends/physicsjournal_fall_02_cosmology.pdf24 “The Nature and Attributes of God”, Catholic Encyclopedia, online edition, http://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=5220

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And the problem of an infinite mind is part of an even bigger problem: can an infinite being exist at all? As philosopher George H. Smith observes, “To be is to be something…and to be something is to be something specific.”25 But to assign attributes is to limit a being, hence the FT is assigned “unlimited attributes”, starting with infinitude, which in turn entails omniscience, omnipotence, etc. Religious authorities and theologians describe the FT in incredible detail. Yet, one wonders how they know anything about an alleged being whose attributes, including the attribute of existence, can’t be discovered by any of the means known to man. No, they can’t discover, so they simply postulate and fabricate. And when necessary, they use the escape hatch of positing (at least partial) unknowability or inscrutability. Contradictions abound in the descriptions of the Fine-Tuner and it is the prime task of theologians to do their convoluted best to try to resolve them. A glance at the CE article on “The Nature and Attributes of God” gives one a flavor of these theological acrobatics.26

Finally, I come to one more fundamental question, perhaps the ultimate question relating to the topic of this article. In order to fine-tune the universe- and life-enabling constants, and generally, to design and create our universe and intelligent life on our planet, a tremendous amount of knowledge was needed. An immeasurably greater amount than that had by all the world’s top physicists, mathematicians, chemists, geneticists, and biologists combined. From where did the Fine-Tuner get all this knowledge? Is there a university for cosmic designers? Dawkins’ central argument against the existence of a cosmic designer is that something as complex as the universe can only be designed by something even more complex, but complexity can only arise through an evolutionary process. Yes, the FT would have to be incredibly complex, but I would argue that this complexity largely consists of the immense knowledge he has to possess. Here we come to a divine dead end.

Did the FT always have this knowledge? That certainly seems to be a corollary of omniscience, one of the primary attributes of the cosmic designer. (We truly have to admire the Catholic Church and other religious authorities for knowing so much about him, including

25 George H. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God, Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY, 1979, p. 41.26 See 24 above.

About the author:Nyegosh Dube has degrees in political science from Yale University (B.A.) and Columbia University (M.A.). He is an editor, journalist, and translator, with extensive experience in the European philanthropy sector. He has a strong interest in the science vs. religion debate and the building of an effective global humanist / rationalist movement. Born in Yugoslavia (Slovenia), he grew up in India and spent many years in the US. His current home is Warsaw, Poland. The April 2007 issue of International Humanist News featured an article by him about religion and politics in Poland.

“The Fine-Tuning Fantasy: A Far-Fetched Chain of Divine Design”© 2008 by Nyegosh Dube

For permission to reproduce any portion of this article, please contact the author at: nydube@yahoo.com

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the very fact that he knows everything!) But, what does “always” mean with reference to a timeless being? And just out of curiosity, what was the FT doing before he began planning the universe? Assuming, of course, that “before” has some meaning in a context of timelessness. Now, if the FT was “always” omniscient, did he actually have to engage in a thought and design process to create the universe and each of its elements down to the smallest particles, like quarks and leptons? Or was the complete design, including the exact details of the particles of physics, already part of his omniscience? If so, can we even say that he designed the universe? Maybe creating the universe was simply inherent in him, like a spider instinctively spinning a web.

Whether the Fine-Tuner is a transcendent cosmic spider or the transcendent intelligent being of Christianity and other religions fully conscious of himself, the problem of how he acquired his knowledge – or perhaps ready-made genetic programming that he implemented spider-like – is unsolvable, as is obviously the question of his very origin, without entering into an infinite regress. To avoid this regress, it has to be argued that the complex knowledge needed for creating the universe was and is simply inherent to the FT. This, however, is an intellectual black hole. It is far more likely that complexity, order, and evolution are inherent to the universe itself. While “design” can be inherent to nature, the knowledge needed to impose or bring about this design from outside cannot be inherent. I believe it is impossible. And positing omnipotence is no solution, for even an omnipotent FT cannot ex nihilo create his own inherent, eternal, and all-encompassing knowledge. Again, this is impossible.

I hope I have successfully conveyed the message that fine-tuning should not be looked at in isolation, as just a question of certain fundamental constants and parameters. It has to be examined in the wider context of both the ultimate goal of the fine-tuning and how a cosmic Fine-Tuner could initiate the process in the first place. I spoke earlier about the universe being full of “excess baggage”, unnecessary for the creation of mankind. But, it is not the billions of other galaxies besides our own that are excess baggage, it is the concept of God that is excess baggage in terms of understanding our universe.

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