The songs of Singapore

In what is apparently supposed to be some kind of explosive revelation, Francis Collins, famous for being intelligent, Christian, and a non-creationist all at the same time, has revealed that "combative atheist" Richard Dawkins "admits" that it is difficult to explain why the fundamental laws of physics have the specific values that they do. Characterizing this apparent gap in scientific explanation as "troubling," the Christian Post quotes Collins as saying that, for atheists, the options for explaining as such are either blind luck or the multiverse.

I was agreeing with Francis Collins until he decided that he knows better than atheists do what atheists must think the explanation for the current state of the laws of physics is. The values of the laws of physics are currently within a very narrow set of life-permitting constants. Life would be impossible in our universe if gravity were slightly stronger or if the nuclear forces were a little weaker. I haven't the expertise to weigh in much on the numbers that the experts have proposed, but I'll stipulate for now that the odds are astronomically small- lets say, one in ten jillion, give or take.

If the argument Collins thought he was mastering here was one for the existence of God, I think he needs to have another little chat with Mr. Dawkins. My two cents would be the usual Teapot Atheist logic nonsense you're all used to: it doesn't follow from "I don't know why things are the way they are" that "God is the reason things are the way they are." You just need to do me one better. God is equally efficacious an explanation for the current state of the universe is as any other species of wizardry is. The Matrix may simply have been designed by a very clever architect, or we may be in one universe among many, or perhaps some as-yet unknown "super-law" of physics utterly mandating that the laws of the universe be as they are at present is responsible. Who knows? I don't.

That's where I do agree with Mr. Collins: explaining the laws of physics is as difficult for me as explaining why Singapore is named Singapore or what chemicals make my fiancee's cooking taste so good: I don't know! I haven't the foggiest idea. I haven't even the slightest idea what has made those things true to the exclusion of all alternatives. I would have a very difficult time explaining those things. But imagine that we tried to import Mr. Collins' reasoning into one of these examples, and generated this list of possible explanations of the universe:

• Singapore is named Singapore because of blind chance.
• Singapore is named Singapore because it is one of an infinite number of cities, each of which has a different one of the infinite number of possible names.
• God named Singapore Singapore in accordance with his inscrutable divine plan.

Something is amiss; there seem to be other live options for why Singapore is named Singapore. Perhaps it is named that way because of a cultural and linguistic history that, though long and complex, is fundamentally amenable to investigation, and so inherently knowable. So that means that I, the atheist, actually have a fourth live option for explaining why Singapore is called Singapore:

• There is a naturalistic explanation for why Singapore is called Singapore that is fundamentally amenable to explanation that I don't yet know.
  

This draws us into an additional set of questions. Firstly, what am I trying to explain exactly? Not the mere existence of Singapore - this is not the cosmological argument for Singapore - but the actual, precise configuration of Singapore, in this case it's name. What it's called. But if I've gotten to this fourth possible explanation, Collins' argument is over- luck, multiverse, or God are no longer the only remaining live options.

But the second question is the more pressing one: why am I trying to explain this particular thing? This might be where it could be pressed that my analogy is in trouble: with Singapore and the configuration of its name, the stakes are relatively insignificant. But with the universe and its laws of physics, the stakes are our entire existence. So given that our entire existence is on the line, we should be particularly disposed to see an intelligence at work because, should things slip just a little bit with the laws of physics, our existence becomes impossible. Where Singapore's name doesn't seem particularly designed towards any greater end, the current configuration of the universe is exquisitely honed towards a single end product: us.

But lets suppose that I want to know is a coincidence of equally dazzling proportions: why does it just happen to be that Singapore's name is so exquisitely honed to rhyme perfectly with the other words of the national anthem of Singapore? It's such a dazzlingly astounding song, such a perfect harmony of verse and music... all possible only because Singapore happens to have such a wonderful name. Even the slightest deviation in its pronunciation would have made the Singaporean national anthem impossible.

Now wait a minute, I hear Mr. Collins protesting- there are lots of other ways that the Singaporean national anthem could have been written, and anyway it isn't like the national anthem was there waiting for the perfecting rhyming nation name to fill in the blank, the song was written around the name after the name was in place.

Ah, now we're on to something.

There are lots of different ways the universe could have been, as Collins' entire argument is based on. Who is to say that the way it is now is better than the way it is now? Better for us? Better for the Singaporeans to have the national anthem they do now, because the one they have now is so very lovely. It is better for them this way, just the way the universe is better for us the way it is now- though I think Collins would be hard-pressed to say that our universe couldn't be better. If our interests are the things really at stake, then I can easily dream up a universe that is much better for our interests that even preserves our free will: God creates an infinite number of souls in heaven. Pretty easy.

But of course, the Singaporean national anthem was written around the name. So is our identification of life as the big miracle of the universe. We're alive. Retrospecting on the universe, it looks like the end result fits within a remarkably narrow band of probabilities. But that's true of any configuration of the universe. If the fundamental forces and amount of matter in the universe were specifically tuned so that the universe were nothing more than a single jelly donut floating in an infinite sea of emptiness, that would be an astronomically unlikely configuration of the universe- and good luck convincing the donut that the universe wasn't designed with the donut in mind; he'll retort with precisely the snide overconfidence with which Mr. Collins drew us into this argument in the first place. We have no objective means for deciding whether we, the jelly donut, or the name of Singapore are in any particularly privileged position in regards to the other such that our particular outcome is the superior design rather than just the way things worked out. And notice that it is irrelevant to this analysis whether things just worked out this way by dumb luck, by having an infinite number of options all run at once, by God doing it, or by an as-yet unknown but fundamentally knowable naturalistic explanation: it is the explanation itself that is suspect. What we are trying to explain simply does not cry out for explanation.

So here's what we have:

The odds of x configuration of y are infinitesimally small, and yield wildly improbable but (retrospectively) fortuitous end result z.

With the national anthem of Singapore, x is the word "Singapore," y is the name of Singapore, and z is the Singaporean national anthem. With Collins's argument, x is the current state of the laws of physics, y is the universe, and z is the existence of our life. And in the present instance or any other we have no criteria whatsoever for determining whether the national anthem of Singapore (or anything like it) or the current existence of life in its present form (which could have been better) is a greater mystery, a mystery more conducive to divine explanation, than any other.

And the same set of possible explanations serves both equally well. So while I've already given the standard laundry list of objections to the design argument for God in previous posts (that it is non-exhaustive, that it leaves us with an unparsimonious conclusion, that it omits the remarkably poor apparent design of the universe, that it doesn't logically follow from the appearance of design that the thing was designed, that we have no good way of knowing the odds in the first place), the objection I add here is that there really isn't any good case that there is anything remarkable here in need of explanation. Any configuration of the universe is, given infinite possible options, inherently unlikely. Anything in that universe retrospecting on that unlikelihood would therefore always be equally well-positioned as Collins is in declaring that he lives in a designed universe. He's the little kid asking why he's him and not somebody else.