Q&A: The Physico-Theological Proof
The Physico-Theological Proof
Question
If we assume the universe is infinite, then isn’t it plausible and reasonable that in one place we would see what looks like precise design arising by chance? It’s like the saying that if you put a monkey in front of a keyboard forever, it’s reasonable that it would type all of Shakespeare’s writings.
This is an innocent question. I believe you’ve addressed it, I just couldn’t find an explicit discussion.
Answer
A similar claim comes up in these discussions, and it is called the anthropic principle. There were countless attempts in countless places in the universe, and one time a genome capable of reproducing itself emerged. Beyond that, there are calculations showing that the probability of this is negligible to the point of zero (think of a not especially long protein chain of length 300 codons. The number of possibilities is 22 to the 300th power, an imaginary number).
Here the claim arises that in conditions that do not allow life, other complex creatures would emerge. I refer you to the other planets known to us. I would expect that if life did not develop there, there would at least be beings with similar complexity, just in a different form. So far, we do not know of any such beings. Therefore, the claim that in every system of laws complex beings arise—aside from the fact that it itself is neither logical nor true—also does not prove itself empirically.
And regarding your argument: if you were right, I would expect to find other complex beings at various levels of complexity, up to life and beyond, of different kinds, in other places in the universe. So far, none are known to us. There is only one insanely complex phenomenon (life), only on our planet. One isolated case in one place in the universe does not indicate any reasonable distribution of complexity throughout the universe.
But even if we assume that this really is what happened, and life arose by chance only on our planet, I would then ask a different question: after all, even if that happened, it was made possible only because of the laws of nature and the values of the constants (fine-tuning) that allow chemistry and biology and an atmosphere, etc. A small change in the values of the constants would not have allowed any of this, and certainly not life. A system of different natural laws would not have allowed life to arise anywhere in the universe. The important point here is that the anthropic argument described above is not relevant in the context of the laws of nature. That is because the laws of nature are uniform throughout the universe. Therefore, if you want to talk about countless attempts to create different laws of nature, you have to talk about different universes (each with different laws of nature), not different places within our universe as in your argument. There is not the slightest hint that countless such universes exist. And even if they did exist, there would still have to be a generator of universes that produces them, and now you have to ask yourself who that is and how they are produced. In other words, this only pushes the question back and does not solve it. In the end, you arrive at an entity that brings about the first step—God.
Discussion on Answer
Excellent, thank you very much.
I wanted to add that in my opinion it actually is possible to know that nature was designed. Just as we know that a watch (whether self-replicating or not) was designed. In other words, to claim that nature was designed is a fact, not a matter of belief.
Regarding the protein chain, it is true that the sequence space is very large. However, according to the opponents’ view, the protein did not arise all at once but gradually from a simpler protein. But in my opinion they are mistaken, because as far as we know every protein requires at least a certain minimum number of amino acids for its minimal function, and if we reduce a protein beyond a certain limit it will cease to function. That is because every protein has particular sites and folds, and sometimes internal channels, that are required in order to perform its function. For example, suppose there is a protein that joins two molecules into one molecule. Such a protein would require at least two binding sites.
What is your proof that the universe is not finite?
Contemporary physics says so.
By the way, the universe is not infinite.