Q&A: Transferring Strangeness
Transferring Strangeness
Question
The fact that the universe has conditions suitable for the existence of life, against all odds, is strange. What you do with the physicotheological argument is simply transfer all that strangeness to God (because an intelligent, omnipotent, bodiless being that exists without a cause is at least as strange as the universe). The question is what exactly you achieved by that. After all, the first is no less strange than the second, right? What advantage is there in positing one strange thing over another? Is there some measure of strangeness? Why is it stranger to posit a multiverse than to posit God, or stranger than to posit that the universe just happened by chance to be suitable for life? They all seem equally strange to me (and the same goes for infinite regress. It doesn’t seem any more or less strange to me than something that stops a regress).
In the end, when you give an explanation for something strange, it has to be at least as strange as the thing you’re explaining, so why is it considered an explanation in the first place?
Answer
See the third notebook.
Discussion on Answer
I have no way to point you more specifically. Read the third notebook. Right at the beginning, and throughout what follows, there is discussion of these points.
Could you point me a bit more specifically, please? I didn’t find any discussion of this.