Are Fine-Tuning Arguments for God (or the Multiverse) Circular?

[Michie]

In a recent video, theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder argues that design arguments for God’s existence commit the fallacy of begging the question—also known as circular reasoning.

Do they?

Before we began, I want to lay my cards on the table and say that I’m a fan of Sabine Hossenfelder. She’s smart, well qualified, and a research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies.

I appreciate her commitment to explaining physics in comprehensible terms and her willingness to challenge ideas that are fashionable in the physics community but that are not well supported by evidence.

She also doesn’t reject religious claims out of hand—as many do. Instead, she typically concludes that they are beyond what science can tell us, one way or the other.



A Finely Tuned Universe?

Continued below.
http://jimmyakin.com/2021/01/are-design-arguments-for-god-circular.html

 

[public hermit]

Well, they're both right. She's right because she limits her criteria to what can be empirically supported. He's right because intuition and the Principle of Sufficient Reason are legitimate philosophical tools and his criteria includes them. This is what happens when a scientist and philosopher engage. They can both be right in all the wrong ways.

 

[BobRyan]

It was never true at any point in time - that the only thing that exists is limited to what can be fully tested, reproduced and understood in the lab. What actually exists, what is true - was always bigger than that.