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AR 24:13 - Recommended resource on the fine-tuning of the cosmos
In this issue:
EDUCATION - "campus religion remains nihilist, meaning-destroying post-structuralist"
ORIGINS - God "would not be unlikely to create a universe suitable for our existence"
Apologia Report 24:13 (1,421)
March 28, 2019
EDUCATION
"Every educated person should be conversant with the sacred texts..." says self-styled progressive Camille Paglia. This is the subtitle of a Wall Street Journal (Dec 25 '18) piece <www.on.wsj.com/2TRbTgy> titled "True Religion" taken from an interview in Spectator.us the day before which includes the following:
"Comparative religion is the true multiculturalism and should be installed as the core curriculum in every undergraduate program. From my perspective as an atheist as well as a career college teacher, secular humanism has been a disastrous failure. Too many young people raised in affluent liberal homes are arriving at elite colleges and universities with skittish, unformed personalities and shockingly narrow views of human existence, confined to inflammatory and divisive identity politics.
"Interest in Hinduism and Buddhism was everywhere in the 1960s counterculture, but it gradually dissipated partly because those most drawn to ‘cosmic consciousness’ either disabled themselves by excess drug use or shunned the academic ladder of graduate school. I contend that every educated person should be conversant with the sacred texts, rituals, and symbol systems of the great world religions - Hinduism, Buddhism, Judeo-Christianity, and Islam - and that true global understanding is impossible without such knowledge....
"Right now, the campus religion remains nihilist, meaning-destroying post-structuralism, whose pilfering god, the one-note Foucault, had near-zero scholarly knowledge of anything before or beyond the European Enlightenment." <www.bit.ly/2OooUZ8>
For more on Paglia, see <www.bit.ly/2CCcWpQ> and <www.bit.ly/2uoV11k>
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ORIGINS
A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos, by Geraint F. Lewis and Luke A. Barnes [1] -- William Lane Craig (Biola University and Houston Baptist University) concludes his Philosophia Christi review (20:2 - 2018, pp596-9): "I highly recommend it for students of fine-tuning."
Craig begins: "Authored by a senior and a junior astrophysicist at the University of Sydney, this book is an open-ended exploration of the fine-tuning of the cosmos for embodied, living agents. Although both authors are convinced on the basis of the evidence that the universe is so fine-tuned, it seems, if one may judge by the imagined dialogue between the two authors in the final chapter, that Lewis, a secularist, favors the multiverse explanation of the observed fine-tuning, while Barnes argues for theism as the best explanation. This disagreement gives the book an aura of open-mindedness and credibility.
"Chapter 1 lays the groundwork for a discussion of the physical evidence for fine-tuning." The fine-tuning claim is "supported in detail in chapters 2-6. Chapter 2 surveys particle physics, showing how finely tuned subatomic particle masses are. Chapter 3 treats the four fundamental forces of nature. Chapter 4 is about thermodynamics, particularly the second law concerning entropy increase, which reveals the incomprehensibly fine-tuned low-entropy condition of the very early universe. Chapter 5 discusses the expansion of the universe, including the framed cosmological constant, one of the most dramatic examples of fine-tuning. Chapter 6 is a discussion of nature's symmetries....
"What makes this part of the book different from many other works on fine-tuning is the degree to which Lewis and Barnes explain the physics of fine-tuning. ...
"Chapter 7 responds to 'A Dozen (or So) Reactions to Fine-Tuning' [and the book's] final chapter takes up the 'why' question: why is the universe fine-tuned for life? ... I must confess that in a book so wholly about physics and so open to there being unknown physical laws that will explain the fine-tuning, I feared that the introduction of the Designer hypothesis would come across as a *deus ex machina* that had no proper place in discussions of this sort.
"But Barnes really pulls off well the introduction and defense of theism. ... A finely tuned universe is much more probable on theism than on naturalism. That raises the issue of what has been called 'divine psychology': why think that God would create a finely tuned universe? Barnes argues on the basis of the goodness of God that He would not be unlikely to create a universe suitable for the existence of embodied, moral agents, and that suffices to neutralize the objection. ...
"Barnes does not allow theism to have the final word in the book. By considering the outlandish hypothesis that we are but simulations in some physicist's computer, Barnes actually increases the credibility of theism, which looks modest by comparison."
For more on fine-tuning in back issues of AR, see <www.bit.ly/2UV99v2>
This past Christmas the New York Times included a brief interview with Craig. In it, he manages to concisely address several objections to Christian faith while making a strong case for the truth of the gospel.
In particular, we applaud his response to a challenge regarding supposed contradictions in the New Testament. Craig cites the approach of C.S. Lewis, giving priority to "mere Christianity" (its core doctrines) over insisting on agreement regarding "in-house matters" such as inerrancy. <www.nyti.ms/2TZSnyF>
For more on William Lane Craig from our back issues, see
<www.bit.ly/2HRpuNO>
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos, by Geraint F. Lewis and Luke A. Barnes (Cambridge Univ Prs, 2016, hardcover, 388 pages) <www.amzn.to/2HRqcud>
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