On Cosmology, Theology and Eternal Regress
With cosmology in mind let us note the following exchange as Sam Harris poses the following question,
Is there any argument for faith, any challenge to your atheism that has given you pause, that has set you back on your heels where you felt you didn’t have a ready answer, etc?
Daniel Dennett responds thusly, “Actually I can’t think of anything.”
Richard Dawkins answers:
I mean, I think the closest is the idea that the fundamental constants of the universe are too good to be true. And that does seem to me to need some kind of explanation. If it’s true. I mean, Victor Stenger doesn’t think it is true but many physicists do. I mean, it certainly doesn’t in any way suggest to me creative intelligence because you’re still left with the problem of explaining where that came from. And a creative intelligence who is sufficiently creative and intelligent enough to fine-tune the constants of the universe to give rise to us has, to got to be a lot more fine-tuned himself than…
It is interesting, having just discussed authoritative claims in science that he sides with the one physicist versus the “many” (whatever that may mean).
Then he basically makes a point about eternal regresses whereby the universe is contingent upon a fine-tuner but that fine-tuner must have been fine-tuned by a finer-tuner, which in turn must have been more finely-tuned by an even finer-tune, etc., etc., etc. and there is no finest-tuner of them all in view. Surely, there are various ways to respond to this.
I am personally always taken aback by the fact that Richard Dawkins’ view is that what is an impossible, or improbable, or illogical claim about God suddenly turns into a possible, probable and logical claim about matter, which I will state thusly:
It is ignorant and superstitious to believe that God made everything out of nothing.
It is logical and scientific to believe that nothing made everything out of nothing.It is ignorant and superstitious to believe that God is eternal.
It is logical and scientific to believe that matter is eternal.God is an effect and must have had a cause.
Matter is the uncaused first cause.If God made everything, then who made God?
Matter made everything and nothing made matter.