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But, out of all imaginable sets of laws of physics, there must be millions
of (at least technically) distinguishable sets of laws that would support
life. Further, if the basic metaphysics of Existence happens to be of a
certain kind, then it might not even be possible for there to be set of
laws
of physics that DON'T support life simply as a side-effect of what it is
for
a universe to exist at all. I'd guess that this is the case, though I have
no real argument for it except the fact that I exist and therefore know
that
at least one universe has laws that DO support life.
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Chris, I think you have to admit that this paragraph is SHEER
speculation, and you basically admit you have no real argument
for it apart from ONE datum...the universe we live in. It seems to
me that a fairly large body of evidence, which falls under the loose
heading of "The Anthropic Principle", indicates that your speculation
is unlikely to be true. Barrow and Tipler's "The Anthropic Cosmological
Principle" contains a laundry list of "finely-tuned" aspects of the laws
of nature which cannot be varied without drastically changing the ability
of the universe to support life. Perhaps you are already familiar with
these examples, such as the inverse-square laws of gravitation and
electromagnetism. Both the exponent of the distance and the coupling
constants in these physical laws can't be varied significantly from their
observed values without jeopardizing the stability of planetary orbits AND
electron states in atoms. These two phenomena observed in our universe
may well be minimal requirements for the existence of life.
Now, having said this, I'm not going to claim that the conclusion of
a designed universe is necessary. Of course, one may avoid that concusion
in a number of ways, most popularly by the "many-universes" assumption (I think
Willaim of Occam would have something to say about that!). There are other
ways too. One can blunt the force of the argument for design from
"fine-tuning" by arguing that the constraints I mentioned still leave room
for combinations of physical laws, coupling constants, etc. that might support
life. One can also argue that there may well be forms of life that we cannot
yet imagine that might flourish in a universe that we think is harsh and
inhospitable to life. But these are speculations with no evidence in their
favor. I would welcome the comments of the list's resident expert on the
Anthropic Principle, Brian Harper, on these options.
But I write this mainly to dispute your claim that "there must be millions"
of possible physical laws that would support life. It seems to me that
what evidence there is on this topic, even though it is not complete,
points in the opposite direction. So why are you so confident in your
assertion?
Let me say, by the way, that I found much in your post that was
helpful and on-target. You posed a clear set of challenges for the
ID theorists to address if they want to develop an empirical science
rather than a philosophical point of view.
Stan Zygmunt