Fine-tuning of the strong nuclear force and the fine structure constant
Here is an article from The New Atlantis written by cosmologist Luke Barnes about one specific example of cosmic fine-tuning. (H/T Uncommon Descent via J. Warner Wallace tweet)
Excerpt:
Today, our deepest understanding of the laws of nature is summarized in a set of equations. Using these equations, we can make very precise calculations of the most elementary physical phenomena, calculations that are confirmed by experimental evidence. But to make these predictions, we have to plug in some numbers that cannot themselves be calculated but are derived from measurements of some of the most basic features of the physical universe. These numbers specify such crucial quantities as the masses of fundamental particles and the strengths of their mutual interactions. After extensive experiments under all manner of conditions, physicists have found that these numbers appear not to change in different times and places, so they are called the fundamental constants of nature.
These constants represent the edge of our knowledge. Richard Feynman called one of them — the fine-structure constant, which characterizes the amount of electromagnetic force between charged elementary particles like electrons — “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man.”
[…]A universe that has just small tweaks in the fundamental constants might not have any of the chemical bonds that give us molecules, so say farewell to DNA, and also to rocks, water, and planets. Other tweaks could make the formation of stars or even atoms impossible. And with some values for the physical constants, the universe would have flickered out of existence in a fraction of a second. That the constants are all arranged in what is, mathematically speaking, the very improbable combination that makes our grand, complex, life-bearing universe possible is what physicists mean when they talk about the “fine-tuning” of the universe for life.
Atheists, both rank-and-file and expert, almost universally misunderstand the fine-tuning argument. They imagine that if the constants and quantities specified at the origin of the universe were different, then humans would just have green skin, or maybe forehead ridges, or pointy ears. Atheists tend to get their view of science from science fiction in novels or television or movies, and they base their worldview off of fantasies, since this is less thinking and feels better than letting the scientific evidence influence their worldview.
So what does the scientific evidence actually show?
Barnes explains:
The strong nuclear force, for example, is the glue that holds protons and neutrons together in the nuclei of atoms. If, in a hypothetical universe, it is too weak, then nuclei are not stable and the periodic table disappears again. If it is too strong, then the intense heat of the early universe could convert all hydrogen into helium — meaning that there could be no water, and that 99.97 percent of the 24 million carbon compounds we have discovered would be impossible, too. And, as the chart to the right shows, the forces, like the masses, must be in the right balance. If the electromagnetic force, which is responsible for the attraction and repulsion of charged particles, is too strong or too weak compared to the strong nuclear force, anything from stars to chemical compounds would be impossible.
Stars are particularly finicky when it comes to fundamental constants. If the masses of the fundamental particles are not extremely small, then stars burn out very quickly. Stars in our universe also have the remarkable ability to produce both carbon and oxygen, two of the most important elements to biology. But, a change of just a few percent in the up and down quarks’ masses, or in the forces that hold atoms together, is enough to upset this ability — stars would make either carbon or oxygen, but not both.
It’s very important that theists are well-equipped to explain how individual cases of fine-tuning work. We need to know what you lose if you alter these constants and quantities even slightly. You can read about some more examples in this previous post.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) indicated Thursday that congressional Republicans might push to defund Planned Parenthood using the budget reconciliation process.
Ryan was asked at his weekly press briefing whether the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare would include a provision to redirect hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars from Planned Parenthood to women’s health care centers that do not provide abortion.
“Planned Parenthood legislation would be in our reconciliation bill,” Ryan said.
The Democrats introduced the practice of “reconciliation” to get their legislation passed in the Senate by simple majority. And now that they’ve lost the majority in the Senate, reconciliation can be used to get conservative things done:
The reconciliation process allows a simple majority of senators, rather than 60 senators, to pass certain forms of budgetary legislation without the threat of a filibuster. Republicans, who control the Senate 52-48, plan to use reconciliation to repeal major aspects of Obamacare, just as Democrats used reconciliation to amend the law in 2010.
Congressional Republicans passed a bill in 2015 that would have defunded Planned Parenthood in the summer of 2015 after undercover videos were released about the group’s organ harvesting operations. Senate Democrats blocked the bill in August, preventing it from coming to a vote. Reconciliation would help Ryan and Republicans avoid stalling tactics after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
Planned Parenthood received more than $550 million from taxpayers in the 2015 fiscal year, a 5 percent increase from 2014. The government payments accounted for 40 percent of its revenue, according to its 2015 annual report. The group received a huge boost in funding when President Obama took office in 2009 and repealed the Mexico City Policy, which bans the use of taxpayer dollars for abortion in foreign aid.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which was overseen by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave Planned Parenthood $100 million between 2010 and 2012. The group continued to rake in taxpayer cash throughout 2015 and 2016, winning nearly $28 million in awards from federal agencies.
That’s a lot of taxpayer money that the Democrats sent to their buddies at Planned Parenthood. But then, Planned Parenthood made a lot of donations to Democrat politicians running for office.
Earlier this week, my friend Kevin sent me new about the findings of the House of Representatives investigation of Planned Parenthood’s business practices.
Here is a summary of their findings from the Daily Signal:
Planned Parenthood affiliates profited by transferring parts of aborted babies to outside organizations in violation of the law, a special House panel has concluded after a yearlong investigation.
In a 418-page report released Wednesday, the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives also found that other organizations involved in the transfer of fetal tissue broke federal or state law.
In one case, a national Planned Parenthood executive interviewed by staff investigators for the House panel said “it doesn’t bother me” that one vendor, StemExpress, paid Planned Parenthood $55 for an aborted baby’s intact brain and then sold it to a customer for more than $3,000.
“It’s none of my concern. It doesn’t bother me,” the Planned Parenthood executive said, according to the panel’s report.
Republican members of the House panel recommend that authorities pursue charges against Planned Parenthood affiliates, which receive taxpayer money, and other entities for violating the law and related regulations.
“It is my hope that our recommendations will result in some necessary changes within both the abortion and fetal tissue procurement industries,” the panel’s chairman, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said in a press release. “Our hope is that these changes will both protect women and their unborn children, as well as the integrity of scientific research.”
It will be interesting to see how far the Republicans are willing to go on this issue. Vice President Mike Pence recently said that the new administration will be in the business of keeping promises. Well, let’s see them do it.
James Crossley is my favorite atheist ancient historian, such a straight shooter. He’s on the skeptical left, but he has a no-baloney way of talking that I really like. I was so excited to summarize this, and there’s not a speck of snark in this summary. Crossley dates the gospel of Mark 37-43 A.D., far earlier than most scholars. Justin Brierley does a great job as moderator. Gary Habermas is OK, but he is not familiar with any useful arguments for God’s existence, (kalam, fine-tuning, origin of life, Cambrian explosion, etc.), and that is a problem in this debate.
Christian philosopher and historian Gary Habermas has been at the forefront of the ‘minimal facts’ approach as evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.
He debates the commonly agreed facts with agnostic New Testament scholar James Crossley and they discuss whether the miracle of the resurrection can be a historically valid explanation of the evidence.
Note: this is the first of two shows they are doing together!!
Habermas: the minimal facts are the facts that even the majority of skeptical scholars will accept
Habermas list of minimal facts: (near universal acceptance)
Jesus died by Roman crucifixion
After his death, his disciples had experiences that they believed were appearances of the risen Jesus
The disciples were transformed by their experiences and proclaimed his resurrection and were willing to die for their belief in the resurrection
The proclamation of his resurrection was early
James was converted by a post-mortem experience
Paul was converted by a post-mortem experience
Habermas list of widely-accepted facts:
Burial for Jesus in a private tomb
The private tomb found empty
The disciples despaired after Jesus was crucified
The proclamation of the resurrection started in Jerusalem
Changing the worship day from Saturday to Sunday
Crossley’s views on the minimal and widely-accepted facts:
Crossley: I am in broad agreement with what Gary said
Crossley: “the resurrection appearances are some of the hardest, best evidence we have” because it’s in early 1 Cor 15:3-8 creed
Crossley: people were convinced that they had seen the risen Christ
The burial in a private tomb:
Crossley: I have my doubts about the private tomb burial and the empty tomb
Crossley: Mark’s gospel has the burial in a private tomb by Joseph of Arimethea, and Mark is the earliest gospel
Crossley: I don’t have a doubt, it’s just that there are other possible alternatives, and then the tradition was invented later – but that’s just a possibility
Crossley: there is not enough evidence to make a decision either way on the burial
The empty tomb:
Habermas: there are multiple lines of evidence for the empty tomb
Habermas: the reason it’s not one of my minimal facts is because a quarter to a third of skeptical scholars reject it
The transformation of the followers of Jesus:
Crossley: “yes, clearly, I don’t think you can argue with that, it’s fairly obvious”
The conversions of James and Paul:
Crossley: “yes, because it’s based on 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, that report, that was handed on to him”
Where Habermas and Crossley agree:
Habermas: you agree with the 6 facts in the minimal facts list, and you have problems with 2 of 5 facts from the widely accepted list
Crossley: Yes
The empty tomb:
Crossley: Two problems: first, 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 doesn’t mention it, but it “probably assumes the idea that Jesus left behind an empty tomb when resurrected, I am convinced by some of the conservative arguments on that one, but it’s not hard evidence for there actually being an empty tomb”
Crossley: Second, “the other early source we have ends with no resurrection appearances”, it makes him a bit skeptical of the empty tomb
Habermas: the empty tomb is not a minimal fact, I want 90% agreement by skeptical scholars for it to be a minimal fact
Habermas: I have never included the empty tomb in my list of minimal facts
Brierley: William Lane Craig puts it in his list of minimal facts
Habermas: It is very well attested, so if that’s what you mean, then it’s a minimal fact, but it doesn’t have the 90% agreement like the other minimal facts
Habermas: I have 21 arguments for the empty tomb, and none of them require early dating of sources or traditional authorship of the gospels, e.g. – the women discovered the empty tomb, the pre-Markan source, the implications of 1 Cor 15 has some force, the sermons summary in Acts 13 which Bart Ehrman dates to 31 or 32 A.D. has putting a body down and a body coming up without being corrupted
Why is 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 more respected as a source than the gospels?
Habermas: There is a unanimous New Testament conclusion, across the board, from conservative to liberal, that in 1 Cor 15:3-8 Paul is presenting creedal data, Richard Bauckham says that this goes back to the early 30s A.D., Paul got this from the eyewitnesses he mentions in Galatians 1 and 2
Crossley: [reads 1 Corinthians:3-8 out loud], now that’s a tradition that’s handed on, this is Paul, we know this is Paul, writing mid-50s, this is kind of gold, this is the evidence I wish we had across the board
Why doesn’t James accept the resurrection:
Crossley: Historians should not conclude that the supernatural is real, concluding the supernatural is outside of history
Crossley: I am more interested in what people believed at that time
Brierley: as a historian, are you required to give an explanation of the commonly-accepted facts
Crossley: yes, historians must give their explanation for the facts
Crossley: we know people have visions, and how the cultural context determines the content of visions, e.g. – the background of martyrdom
Brierley: so you would go for the hallucination hypothesis?
Crossley: yes, but I prefer not to use that word
Should historians rule out the supernatural?
Habermas: let’s not ask what caused the event, let’s just see if the disciples thought they saw him before he died, that he died on the cross, and then believed they saw him after he died, like you might see someone in the supermarket
Habermas: I’m not asking whether a miracle occurred, I just want to know whether Jesus was seen after he died on the cross
Crossley: that sounds like the angle I’m coming at this from
Crossley: the problem is that there is a supernatural element to some of the appearances, so it’s not a supermarket appearances
Brierley: it’s not angels and hallelujah in the sky
Habermas: nothing like that, no light in the early accounts, fairly mundane
Does James agree that people believed they saw Jesus after his death?
Crossley: yes, I think that’s fairly clear that we do
Crossley: but historians cannot prove claims that what happened to Jesus was supernatural
Brierley: your view is so far from what I see on Internet atheists sites, where they say it’s all legendary accumulation, fairy tales
Crossley: I’m perfect comfortable with the idea – and I think it happened – that people created stories, invented stories
Crossley: there are too many cases where people are sincerely professing that they thought they saw Jesus after his death
Would you expect the disciples to have visions of a resurrected Jesus if nothing happened to him?
Habermas: the dividing line is: did something happen to Jesus, or did something happen to his disciples?
Habermas: the view that people were seeing a kind of ghostly Jesus (non-bodily) – a Jedi Jesus – after his death is a resurrection view, but I hold to a bodily resurrection view
Brierley: N.T. Wright says a resurrected Jesus was contrary to expectations – should we expect the disciples to have a vision of Jesus as resurrected?
Crossley: Wright generalizes too much thinking that there was a single view of the resurrection (the general resurrection at the end of the age), there are a variety of views, some are contradictory
Crossley: Herod Antipas thought that Jesus might be John the Baptist returned from the dead, and he knew Jesus was flesh and blood, there is the story of the dead rising in the earthquake in Matthew, there are stories of the resurrection in Maccabees, and this would influence what people expected
Habermas: the earliest Christian view was *bodily* resurrection
Crossley: yes, I think that’s right
Crossley: In Mark 6, they thought Jesus was a ghost, so there is room for disagreement
Why should a historian not rule out a supernatural explanation?
Habermas: to get to supernatural, you have to go to philosophy – it’s a worldview problem
Habermas: he predicted his own death and resurrection
Habermas: one factor is the uniqueness of Jesus
Habermas: the early church had belief in the bodily resurrection, and a high Christology out of the gate
Habermas: you might look at evidence for corroborated near-death experiences that raise the possibility of an afterlife
Crossley: I’m content to leave it at the level of what people believe and not draw any larger conclusions
Crossley: regarding the predicting his own death, the gospels are written after, so it’s not clear that these predictions predate Jesus’ death
Crossley: it’s not surprising that Jesus would have predicted his own death, and that he might have foreseen God vindicating him
If you admit to the possibility of miracles, is the data sufficient to conclude that the best explanation of the facts is resurrection?
Crossley: If we assume that God exists, and that God intervenes in history, and that this was obvious to everyone, then “of course”
Brierley: Are you committed to a naturalistic view of history?
Crossley: Not quite, broadly, yes, I am saying this all I can do
Brierley: should James be open to a supernatural explanation?
Habermas: if you adopt methodological naturalism,it colors how look at the data is seen, just like supernaturalism does
