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38 THE TELEOLOGICAL

ARGUMENT Robin Collins

Introduction

Design arguments have a long history, probably being the most commonly cited argument for believing in a deity. In ancient India, for instance, the argument from design was advanced by the so-called Nyaya (or logical-atomist) school (100–1000 ce), which argued for the existence of a deity based on the order of the world, which they compared both to human artifacts and to the human body (Smart 1964: 153–4). In the West, the design argument goes back to at least Heraclitus (500 bce). It reached its highpoint with the publication of Paley’s Natural Theology (1802), which primarily appealed to the intricate structure of plants and animals as evidence for design. With the advent of Darwin’s theory of evolution, this version of the argument underwent an almost fatal blow, although it has gained a small following since the 1990s among advocates of the so-called intelligent design movement. By far the most widely cited evidence for design, however, is that from findings in physics and cosmology during the twentieth century. In this chapter we will mainly focus on the evidence from the so-called fine-tuning of the cosmos for conscious, embodied life (CEL), although we will briefly look at other evidence from the beauty and elegance of the laws of nature.

the evidence of fine-tuning

Many examples of this fine-tuning can be given, a few of which we will briefly recount here. One particularly important category of fine-tuning is that of the constants of physics. The constants of physics are a set of fundamental numbers that, when plugged into the laws of physics, determine the basic structure of the universe. An example of such a constant is the gravitational constant G that is part of Newton’s law of gravity, F 5 GM1M2/r

2. G essentially determines the strength of gravity between two masses. If one were to double the value of G, for instance, then the force of gravity between any two masses would double.

Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion, edited by Chad Meister, and Paul Copan, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/tccd-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1114699. Created from tccd-ebooks on 2020-07-09 09:57:51.

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So far, physicists have discovered four forces in nature: gravity, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, and the strong nuclear force that binds protons and neutrons together in an atom. As measured in a certain set of standard dimensionless units (Barrow and Tipler 1986: 292–5), gravity is the least strong of the four forces, and the strong nuclear force is the strongest, being a factor of 1040 – or ten thousand billion, billion, billion, billion – times stronger than gravity. Various calculations show that the strength of each of the forces of nature must fall into a very small CEL-permitting region for CEL to exist. As just one example, consider gravity. Compared to the total range of forces, the strength of gravity must fall in a relatively narrow range in order for CEL to exist. If we increased the strength of gravity a billion-fold, for instance, the force of gravity on a planet with the mass and size of the earth would be so great that organisms anywhere near the size of human beings, whether land-based or aquatic, would be crushed. (The strength of materials depends on the electromagnetic force via the fine-structure constant, which would not be affected by a change in gravity.) Even a much smaller planet of only 40 feet in diameter – which is not large enough to sustain organisms of our size – would have a gravitational pull of one thousand times that of earth, still too strong for organisms of our brain size, and hence level of intelligence, to exist. As astrophysicist Martin Rees notes, ‘In an imaginary strong gravity world, even insects would need thick legs to support them, and no animals could get much larger’ (Rees 2000: 30). Other calcula- tions show that if the gravitational force were increased by more than a factor of 3000, the maximum lifetime of a star would be a billion years, thus severely inhibiting the probability of CEL evolving (Collins 2003). Of course, a three-thousand-fold increase in the strength of gravity is a lot, but compared to the total range of the strengths of the forces in nature (which span a range of 1040, as we saw above), it is very small, being one part in a billion, billion, billion, billion. There are other cases of the fine-tuning of the constants of physics besides the strength of the forces, however. Probably the most widely discussed (and esoteric) among physicists and cosmologists is the fine-tuning of what is known as the cosmological constant. This is a number in Einstein’s theory of general relativity that influences the expansion rate of the universe. If the cosmological constant were not fine-tuned to within an extremely narrow range – one part in 1053 or even 10120 of its ‘theoretically possible’ range of values – the universe would expand so rapidly that all matter would quickly disperse, and thus galaxies, stars, and even small aggregates of matter could never form (see, e.g., Rees 2000: 95–102, 154–5; Collins 2003). Besides the constants of physics, however, there is also the fine-tuning of the laws. If the laws of nature were not just right, CEL would probably be impossible. For example, consider again the four forces of nature. If gravity (or a force like it) did not exist, masses would not clump together to form stars or planets and hence the existence of complex CEL would be seriously inhibited, if not rendered impossible; if the electromagnetic force didn’t exist, there would be no chemistry; if the strong force didn’t exist, protons and neutrons could not bind together and hence no atoms with atomic numbers greater than hydrogen would exist; and if the strong force were a long-range force (like gravity and electromagnetism) instead of a short-range force

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that only acts between protons and neutrons in the nucleus, all matter would either almost instantaneously undergo nuclear fusion and explode or be sucked together forming a black hole. Similarly, other laws and principles are necessary for CEL. As the prominent Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson points out (1979: 251), if the Pauli-exclusion principle did not exist, which dictates that no two fermions can occupy the same quantum state, all electrons would occupy the lowest atomic orbit, eliminating complex chemistry; and if there were no quantization principle, which dictates that particles can only occupy certain discrete allowed quantum states, there would be no atomic orbits and hence no chemistry since all electrons would be sucked into the nucleus. Finally, in his book Nature’s Destiny, the biochemist Michael Denton extensively discusses various higher-level features of the natural world, such as the many unique properties of carbon, oxygen, water, and the electromagnetic spectrum, that are conducive to the existence of complex biochemical systems. As one of many examples Denton presents, both the atmosphere and water are transparent to electromagnetic radiation in a thin band in the visible region, but are transparent nowhere else except to radio waves. If, instead, either of them absorbed electromagnetic radiation in the visible region, the existence of terrestrial CEL would be seriously inhibited, if not rendered impossible (Denton 1998: 56–7). These higher-level coincidences indicate a deeper level fine-tuning of the fundamental laws and constants of physics. As the above examples indicate, the evidence for fine-tuning is extensive, even if one has doubts about some individual cases. As the philosopher John Leslie has pointed out, ‘clues heaped upon clues can constitute weighty evidence despite doubts about each element in the pile’ (Leslie 1988: 300). At the very least, these cases of fine-tuning show the truth of Freeman Dyson’s observation that there are many ‘lucky accidents in physics’ (1979: 251) without which CEL would be impossible.

the argument formulated

Now it is time to consider the way in which the existence of a fine-tuned universe supports theism. In this section, I will argue that the evidence of fine-tuning primarily gives us a reason for preferring theism over what could be called the naturalistic single-universe hypothesis (NSU): the hypothesis that there is only one universe, and it exists as a brute fact. (We will examine the typical alternative explanation of the fine-tuning offered by many atheists – what I call the ‘many-universes hypothesis’ – in a section below.) We will present our argument for the case of the fine-tuning of the constants, but with some modifications it will apply to the other types of fine-tuning for CEL mentioned above. Although the fine-tuning argument against the NSU can be cast in several different forms – such as inference to the best explanation – I believe the most rigorous way of formulating the argument is in terms of what is often called the likelihood principle, a standard principle of confirmation theory (e.g., see Sober 2002). Simply put, the principle says that whenever we are considering two competing hypotheses, an observation

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counts as evidence in favor of the hypothesis under which the observation has the highest probability (or is the least improbable). Since the type of probability in the likelihood principle is what is known as epistemic probability (see below), the likelihood principle can be reworded more intuitively in terms of what could be called the surprise principle: namely, whenever we are considering two competing hypotheses, an observation counts as evidence in favor of the hypothesis under which it is least surprising. Moreover, the degree to which the observation counts in favor of one hypothesis over another is proportional to the degree to which the observation is more probable (or less surprising) under the one hypothesis than the other. Using this principle, we can develop the fine-tuning argument in a two-step form as follows:

Premise (1) The existence of a fine-tuned universe with CEL is not highly improbable (or surprising) under theism.

Premise (2) The existence of a fine-tuned universe with CEL is very improbable (surprising) under the NSU.

Conclusion: From premises (1) and (2) and the likelihood principle, it follows that the fine-tuning data provides significant evidence to favor the design hypothesis over the NSU.

At this point, we should pause to note two features of this argument. First, the argument does not say that the fine-tuning evidence proves that the universe was designed, or even that it is likely that the universe was designed. Indeed, of itself it does not even show that we are epistemically warranted in believing in theism over the NSU. In order to justify these sorts of claims, we would have to look at the full range of evidence both for and against the design hypothesis – something I am not doing in this chapter. Rather, the argument merely concludes that the fine-tuning significantly supports theism over the NSU. (I say ‘significantly supports’ because presumably the ratio of probabilities for the fine-tuning under theism versus the NSU is quite large.) In this way, the evidence of the fine-tuning argument is much like a defendant’s DNA being found on the murder weapon, in a trial. By the ‘likelihood’ or ‘surprise principle,’ the DNA on the murder weapon provides significant evidence that the defendant is guilty because its existence would be much more surprising if the defendant were innocent than if he were guilty. Yet one could not conclude merely from the DNA alone that the defendant is guilty, for there could be other counter- vailing evidence, such as the testimony of reliable witnesses that he was not at the scene of the crime. The DNA would still count as significant evidence of guilt, but this evidence would be counterbalanced by the testimony of the witnesses. Similarly the evidence of fine-tuning significantly supports theism over the NSU, though it does not itself show that, everything considered, theism is the most plausible explanation of the existence of a universe with CEL.

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Support for the premises

Support for Premise (1): Premise (1) is easy to support and somewhat less controversial than premise (2). The argument in support of it can be simply stated as follows: since God is an all-good being, and in and of itself it is good for intelligent, conscious beings to exist, it is not highly surprising or highly improbable that God would create a world that could support CEL. Thus, the fine-tuning is not highly improbable under theism. Support for Premise (2): Upon looking at the data, many people find it very obvious that the fine-tuning is highly improbable under the NSU. And it is easy to see why when we think of the fine-tuning in terms of various analogies. In the ‘dart-board analogy,’ for example, the theoretically possible values for fundamental constants of physics can be represented as a dart-board that fills the whole galaxy, and the condi- tions necessary for CEL to exist as a small inch-wide target. Accordingly, from this analogy it seems obvious that it would be highly improbable for the fine-tuning to occur under the NSU – that is, for the dart to hit the target by chance. Now some philosophers, such as Keith Parsons (1990: 182), object to the claim that the fine-tuning is highly improbable under the NSU by arguing that since we only have one universe, the notion of the fine-tuning of the universe being probable or improbable is meaningless. Although I do not have space to provide a full-scale response to this objection, I will briefly sketch an answer. The first is to note that the relevant notion of probability occurring in the fine-tuning argument is a widely recognized type of probability called epistemic probability (e.g., see Hacking 1975; Plantinga 1993: chs. 8 and 9). Roughly, the epistemic probability of a proposition can be thought of as the degree of confi- dence or belief we rationally should have in the proposition. Further, the conditional epistemic probability of a proposition R on another proposition S – written as P(R/S) – can be defined as the degree to which the proposition S of itself should rationally lead us to expect that R is true. Under the epistemic conception of probability, therefore, the statement that the fine-tuning of the cosmos is very improbable under the NSU is to be understood as making a statement about the degree to which the NSU would or should, of itself, rationally lead us to expect cosmic fine-tuning. The notion of itself is important here. The rational degree of expectation should not be confused with the degree to which one should expect the constants of physics to fall within the CEL range if one believed the NSU. For even those who believe in this hypothesis should expect the constants of physics to be CEL-permitting since this follows from the fact that we are alive. Rather, the conditional epistemic probability in this case is the degree to which the NSU of itself should lead us to expect constants of physics to be CEL-permitting. This means that in assessing the conditional epistemic probability in this and other similar cases, one must exclude contributions to our expectations arising from other information we have, such as that we are alive. In the case at hand, one way of doing this is by means of the following sort of thought experiment. Imagine a disembodied being with mental capacities and a knowledge of physics comparable to that of the most intelligent physicists alive today, except that the being does not know whether the values of the constants of physics allow

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for CEL to arise. Further, suppose that this disembodied being believed in the NSU. Then, the degree that being should rationally expect the constants of physics to be CEL-permitting will be equal to our conditional epistemic probability, since its expec- tation is solely a result of its belief in the NSU, not other factors such as its awareness of its own existence. Given this understanding of the notion of conditional epistemic probability, it is not difficult to see that the conditional epistemic probability of a constant of physics having a CEL-permitting value under the NSU will be much smaller than under theism. The reason is simple when we think about our imaginary disembodied being. If such a being were a theist, it would have some reason to believe that the values of constants would fall into the CEL-permitting region (see the argument in support of premise (1) above). On the other hand, if the being were a subscriber to the NSU, it would have no reason to think the value would be in the CEL-permitting region instead of any other part of the ‘theoretically possible’ region R. Thus, the being has more reason to believe the constants would fall into the CEL-permitting region under theism than the NSU; that is, the epistemic probability under theism is larger than under the NSU, or put differ- ently, the existence of a CEL-permitting universe is more surprising under the NSU than theism. How much more surprising? That depends on the degree of fine-tuning. Here, I will simply note that it seems obvious that in general the higher the degree of fine-tuning – that is, the smaller the width of the CEL-permitting range is to the ‘theoretically possible’ range – the greater the surprise under the NSU, and hence the greater the ratio of the two probabilities. To go beyond these statements and to assign actual epistemic probabilities (or degrees of surprise) under the NSU – or to further justify these claims of improbability – would require defending a version of the proba- bilistic principle of indifference, which is beyond the scope of this chapter.

Objections to the argument

As powerful as the fine-tuning argument against the NSU is, several major objections have been raised to it by both atheists and theists. In this section, we will consider some of these objections in turn.

Objection 1: more fundamental law objection

One criticism of the fine-tuning argument is that, as far as we know, there could be a more fundamental law under which the constants of physics must have the values they do. Thus, given such a law, it is not improbable that the known constants of physics fall within the CEL-permitting range. Besides being entirely speculative, the problem with postulating such a law is that it simply moves the improbability of the fine- tuning up one level, to that of the postulated physical law itself. As the astrophysicists Bernard Carr and Martin Rees note, ‘even if all apparently anthropic coincidences could be explained [in terms of some grand unified theory], it would still be remarkable that the relationships dictated by physical theory happened also to be those propitious for CEL’ (Carr and Rees 1979: 612).

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For the theist, then, the development of a grand unified theory would not undercut the case for design, but would only serve to deepen our appreciation of the ingenuity of the creator. Instead of separately fine-tuning each individual parameter, in this view, the designer simply carefully chose those laws that would yield CEL-permitting values for each parameter.

Objection 2: other forms of CEL objection

Another objection commonly raised against the fine-tuning argument is that as far as we know, other forms of CEL could exist even if the constants of physics were different. So, it is claimed, the fine-tuning argument ends up presupposing that all forms of CEL must be like us. One answer to this objection is that many cases of fine-tuning do not make this presupposition. If, for example, the cosmological constant were much larger than it is, matter would disperse so rapidly that no planets, and indeed no stars, could exist. Without stars, however, there would exist no stable energy sources for complex material systems of any sort to evolve. So, all the fine-tuning argument presupposes in this case is that the evolution of CEL requires some stable energy source. This is certainly a very reasonable assumption.

Objection 3: the ‘Who Designed God?’ objection

Perhaps the most common objection that atheists raise to the argument from design, of which the fine-tuning argument is one instance, is that postulating the existence of God does not solve the problem of design but merely transfers it up one level, to the question of who designed God. One response to the above argument is that it only relies on comparison of the epistemic probabilities of fine-tuning under the two different hypotheses, not on whether the new hypothesis reduces the overall complexity of one’s worldview. As an analogy, if complex, intricate structures (such as aqueducts and buildings) existed on Mars, one could conclude that their existence would support the hypothesis that intelligent, extraterrestrial beings existed on Mars in the past, even if such beings are much more complex than the structures to be explained. Second, however, for reasons entirely independent of the argument from design, God has been thought to have little, if any internal complexity. Indeed, medieval philosophers and theologians often went as far as advocating the doctrine of divine simplicity, according to which God is claimed to be absolutely simple, without any internal complexity. So, atheists who push this objection have a lot of arguing to do to make it stick. (For a more detailed treatment of the ‘Who Designed God?’ objection, see Collins 2005.)

the many-universes hypothesis

Another objection to considering fine-tuning as evidence for design is one that takes us almost into the realm of science fiction: the proposal that there are a very large

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number of universes, each with different values for the fundamental parameters of physics. If such multiple universes exist, it would be no surprise that the parameters in one of them would have just the right values for the existence of CEL, just as in the case where if enough lottery tickets were generated, it would be no surprise that one of them turned out to be the winning number. How did these universes come into existence? Typically, the answer is to postulate some kind of physical process, what I will call a ‘universe generator.’ Against the naturalistic version of the universe-generator hypothesis, one could argue that the universe generator itself must be ‘well designed’ to produce even one CEL-sustaining universe. After all, even a mundane item such as a bread-making machine, which only produces loaves of bread instead of universes, must be well-designed as an appliance and have just the right ingredients (flour, yeast, gluten, and so on) in just the right amounts to produce decent loaves of bread. Indeed, as I have shown in detail elsewhere (Collins 2009), if one carefully examines the most popular and most well- developed universe-generator hypothesis – that arising out of inflationary cosmology – one finds that it contains just the right fields and laws to generate CEL-permitting universes. Eliminate or modify one of the fields or laws by just a little bit, and no CEL-sustaining universes would be produced. If this is right, then invoking some sort of universe generator as an explanation of fine-tuning only pushes the issue of design up one level to the question of who or what designed it. Besides the universe generator hypothesis, a very small minority of scientists and philosophers have proposed what could be called a metaphysical many-universe hypothesis, according to which universes are thought to exist on their own without being generated by any physical process. Typically, advocates of this view – such as the late Princeton University philosopher David Lewis (1986) and the University of Pennsylvania astrophysicist Max Tegmark (1998) – claim that every possible set of laws is instantiated in some universe or another. One problem with this hypothesis is that it cannot explain why we inhabit a universe that is so orderly and has such low initial entropy: it is much more likely for there to exist local islands with the sort of order necessary for CEL than for the entire universe to have such an ordered arrangement. Thus, their hypothesis cannot explain the highly ordered character of the universe as a whole. Among others, George Schlesinger has raised this objection against Lewis’s hypothesis (1984). This sort of objection was raised against a similar explanation of the high degree of order in our universe offered by the famous physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, and has generally been considered fatal to Boltzmann’s explanation (Davies 1974: 103). Despite these objections and the fact that the multiple-universe hypothesis typically has been advanced by naturalists as an alternative explanation to design, I am not objecting to the notion of many universes itself. I actually believe that theists should be open to the idea that God created our universe by means of a universe generator. It makes some sense that an infinitely creative deity would create other universes, not just our own.

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Other evidences for design

Besides the fine-tuning for CEL, there are other significant evidences for design based on the findings of physics and cosmology, such as the extraordinary degree of beauty, elegance, harmony, and ingenuity exhibited by the fundamental mathe- matical structure of the universe. For instance, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg, himself an atheist, devotes a whole chapter of his book, Dreams of a Final Theory (ch. 6, ‘Beautiful theories’), to explaining how the criteria of beauty and elegance are commonly used to guide physicists in formulating the right laws. Because this beauty and elegance has been so successful in guiding physicists in developing highly successful theories, it is difficult to claim that this beauty and elegance is merely in the eye of the beholder. Today, this use of beauty and elegance as a guide is particularly evident in the popularity of superstring theory, which is widely considered the most feasible candidate for a truly fundamental theory in physics. Yet, it is almost entirely motivated by considerations of elegance, having no direct experimental support in its favor (Greene 1999: 214). Now such beauty, elegance, and ingenuity make sense if the universe was designed by God. I would contend, however, that apart from some sort of design hypothesis, there is no reason to expect the fundamental laws to be elegant or beautiful. The metaphysical many-universes hypothesis, for example, cannot in any obvious way explain why our universe has such an elegant and beautiful fundamental structure, since under this hypothesis there would be many, many universes that contained observers in which the underlying mathematical structure would not be beautiful. Thus theism makes more sense of this aspect of the world than atheism, whether that atheism is of the single-universe or many-universe variety (see Collins 2009). Similar things could be said about the fact that the world is arranged in just the right way so that we can understand its underlying structure, something which could be called the ‘discoverability’ of the laws of physics, as for example discussed by Eugene Wigner (1960) and Mark Steiner (1998).

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have argued that the fine-tuning of the cosmos for CEL provides strong evidence for preferring theism over the NSU. I then argued that although one can partially explain the fine-tuning of the constants of physics by invoking some sort of many-universes generator, we have good reasons to believe that the many- universe generator itself would need to be well designed, and hence that hypothesizing some sort of many-universes generator only pushes the case for design up one level. I further argued that other features of the structure of the universe, such as the beauty and elegance of the laws of nature, also suggest design. When all the evidence is considered, I believe, one has a good cumulative case argument for a designer – that is, an argument in which many lines of evidence point to the same conclusion. Of course, one would need additional arguments, such as those offered by Richard Swinburne (2004: ch. 5), to conclude that the designer is the theistic God.

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See also David Hume (Chapter 15), Immanuel Kant (Chapter 16), Creation and divine action (Chapter 35), The cosmological argument (Chapter 37), Problems with theistic arguments (Chapter 45), Science and the improbability of God (Chapter 46), Religion and science (Chapter 71).

References Barrow, J. and F. Tipler (1986) The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carr, B. J. and M. J. Rees (1979) ‘The Anthropic Cosmological Principle and the structure of the physical

world,’ Nature 278 (12 April): 605–12. Collins, R. (2003) ‘The evidence for fine-tuning,’ in N. Manson (ed.) God and Design, London: Routledge. —— (2005) ‘Hume, fine-tuning and the Who Designed God? objection,’ in J. Sennett and D. Groothius

(eds) In Defense of Natural Theology: A Post-Humean Assessment, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. —— (2009) ‘A theistic perspective on the Multiverse Hypothesis,’ in B. Carr (ed.) Universe or Multiverse?,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davies, P. (1974) The Physics of Time Asymmetry, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Denton, M. (1998) Nature’s Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe, New York:

Free Press. Dyson, F. (1979) Disturbing the Universe, New York: Harper & Row. Greene, B. (1999) The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate

Theory, New York: W. W. Norton. Hacking, I. (1975) The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas About Probability,

Induction and Statistical Inference, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leslie, J. (1988) ‘How to draw conclusions from a fine-tuned cosmos,’ in R. Russell, W. R. Stoeger, and

G. V. Coyne (eds) Physics, Philosophy and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding, Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Press.

Lewis, D. (1986) On the Plurality of Worlds, New York: Blackwell. Parsons, K. (1990) ‘Is there a case for Christian theism?’, in J. P. Moreland and K. Nielsen (eds) Does God

Exist? The Great Debate, Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson. Plantinga, A. (1993) Warrant and Proper Function, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rees, M. (2000) Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe, New York: Basic Books. Schlesinger, G. (1984) ‘Possible worlds and the mystery of existence,’ Ratio 26: 1–18. Smart, N. (1964) Doctrine and Argument in Indian Philosophy, London: Allen & Unwin. Sober, E. (2002) ‘Bayesianism – its scope and limits,’ in R. Swinburne (ed.) Bayes’s Theorem, Oxford:

Oxford University Press. Steiner, M. (1998) The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem, Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press. Swinburne, R. (2004) The Existence of God, 2nd edn, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Tegmark, M. (1998) ‘Is “the theory of everything” merely the ultimate ensemble theory?’, Annals of Physics

270: 1–51. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9704009. Weinberg, S. (1992) Dreams of a Final Theory, New York: Vintage Books. Wigner, E. (1960) ‘The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences,’ Communications

on Pure and Applied Mathematics 13: 1–14. Available at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/ reading/Wigner.html.

Further reading Holder, R. (2004) God, the Multiverse, and Everything: Modern Cosmology and the Argument from

Design, Aldershot, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. (Argues that the evidence of fine-tuning supports theism.)

Leslie, J. (1989) Universes, London: Routledge. (Explores the question of multiple universes as an alter- native to a design explanation of fine-tuning.)

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http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9704009

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html

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—— (ed.) (1998) Modern Cosmology and Philosophy, Amherst, NY: Prometheus. (Articles exploring the implications of modern cosmology for philosophy and teleology.)

Manson, N. (ed.) (2003) God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science, New York: Routledge. (Twenty-one authors vigorously debate the merits of divine teleology, from the realm of biology to cosmology.)

Manson, N. and J. Richards (eds) (2005) Philosophical Issues in Intelligent Design, Special Issue of Philosophia Christi ns 7/2 (December). (Contains a debate about whether the fine-tuning can be considered improbable.)

Robson, J. (ed.) (1987) Origin and Evolution of the Universe: Evidence for Design? Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press. (Explores whether biology and cosmology provide evidence for design.)

Susskind, L. (2005) The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design, New York: Little, Brown & Co. (A leading physicist presents the many-universes hypothesis based on superstring theory, claiming that it eliminates the need to appeal to a design explanation of the fine-tuning.)

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