Many Physicists Prefer Design Explanation of Cosmic Fine-Tuning

"The cosmological constant must be tuned to 120 decimal places and there are also many mysterious ‘coincidences’ involving the physical constants that appear to be necessary for life, or any form of information processing, to exist....Fred Hoyle first pointed out, the beryllium would decay before interacting with another alpha particle were it not for the existence of a remarkably finely-tuned resonance in this interaction. Heinz Oberhummer has studied this resonance in detail and showed how the amount of oxygen and carbon produced in red giant stars varies with the strength and range of the nucleon interactions. His work indicates that these must be tuned to at least 0.5% if one is to produce both these elements to the extent required for life."  -- Physicists B.J. Carr and M.J. Rees, "Fine-Tuning in Living Systems." 

 Prior to Darwin, William Paley made a famous analogy in his book Natural Theology, the analogy of a someone walking along a beach and finding a watch. Paley argued that it would be unreasonable for any such person to deny that such a thing (with so purposeful an arrangement of so many parts) was a product of design; and that it is just as unreasonable to deny that the purposeful arrangement of parts we see so abundantly in biological organisms is the product of design. The untrue legend arose that Darwin answered Paley's argument; but he did not. Darwin never mentioned Paley's famous analogy in any of his chief writings. Darwin never credibly explained how some fine-tuned arrangement of very many parts to meet a particular functional end could be naturally achieved. Darwin paid almost no attention to the huge fine-tuned complexity and component interdependence in organisms. 

In the twentieth century, the evidence for what looks like purposeful design in organisms increased enormously, as scientists discovered the enormous organization and component interdependence of hundreds of types of human cells and thousands of types of protein molecules, very high levels of functional complexity Darwin knew nothing about. In the late twentieth century, it began to become clear that there was a second gigantic basis for believing in design in nature: the fine-tuning of the universe's fundamental constants and laws. It turns out that the universe must be very specially arranged for there to be any possibility of there being creatures such as human beings and civilizations such as our civilization. The table below helps to show some of the requirements. The color coding helps to show how the same things recur as requirements for multiple things. 

In 2024 a poll was taken at the Black Holes Inside and Out conference in Copenhagen. 85 physicist attendees filled out a survey, with the results described in the "Copenhagen Survey on Black Holes and Fundamental Physics" paper here. One of the questions was framed as follows: "In your opinion, what explains the values of physical constants of nature and the claimed anthropic coincidences?"  The wording of the questioning was biased, with the phrase "anthropic coincidences" tending to suggest a "just chance" explanation. Despite the wording, a small but significant fraction of the physicist respondents expressed support for an "intelligent designer" answer. 

The results were these:

About 3% of the physicist respondents preferred an explanation of "an intelligent designer." The most popular explanation was the non-explanation of "brute facts." Someone appealing to brute facts is someone basically saying, "There is no explanation."

The authors of this survey have since done a more recent survey, asking some of the same questions, but polling a much larger group of physicists. They give their results in the paper "Big Mysteries Survey: Physicists’ Views on Cosmology, Black Holes, Quantum Mechanics, and Quantum Gravity," which you can read here. The authors of the paper start out by stating this:

"In the summer of 2024, a survey was conducted at the Black Hole Inside Out Conference in Copenhagen to assess physicists’ views on a range of ongoing controversies. Eighty-five scientists responded. One year later, the authors collaborated with the American Physical Society’s Physics Magazine on a substantially larger follow-up survey, which polled 1,675 participants from the magazine’s readership and the members of the American Physical Society. The Physics Magazine survey therefore provides a broader view of attitudes within the physics community and allows comparisons with the more focused conference-based Copenhagen sample."

Figure 1 of the paper tells us that 70% of the respondents identified themselves as researchers, with only 21% identifying themselves as "a science enthusiast" or "other."

Question 6 of the survey was framed as below

Question 6: Anthropic Coincidences

Question. The values for nature’s physical constants—from the strength of nuclear forces to the mass of the electron—are not determined by current theories, It has been suggested that if these values had been slightly different, the universe would likely not have formed complex structures and—eventually—life. This idea has led some to call for other physical or even metaphysical hypotheses to explain the apparent 'coincidence' that these constants are tuned to life-permitting values. Others have however questioned if such arguments are on sound footing. In your opinion what explains the values of physical constants and these so-called anthropic coincidences?

Like the corresponding question in the previous survey, this question is biased. Its heading of "Anthropic Coincidences" rather seems designed to suggest in respondents the idea of mere chance or coincidence being involved. Nonetheless, a substantial fraction (9%) of the respondents selected "explained by an intelligent designer" as their answer to the question posed above. The responses are given below:

I may note that the paper documenting this poll makes no claim that it was a secret ballot poll, and makes no mention that the respondents were guaranteed that their responses would be kept confidential. In polls such as this, we can assume that any controversial answer would get a much higher response under circumstances in which the secrecy of a person's response would be guaranteed. 

None of the answers other than "explained by an intelligent designer" have high credibility. Specifically: 

• The first answer in the list above is the mangled claim that "the values of the constants are set by a principle (such as the 'naturalness' principle forbidding a theory to have independent, fine-tuned parameters)." The offered example makes no sense. The issue is why our universe has fine-tuned constants. You don't explain that by appealing to some principle involving theories. 
• The most popular answer ("they are brute facts that need no further explanation") is just an "I have no explanation" answer. 
• The "explained by anthropic selection in a multiverse" answer is witless. There is no evidence and can never be any evidence for any such thing as a "multiverse," some vast collection of other universes. The only universe we can ever observe is our own universe. There is no credibility in the idea of "anthropic selection." If a multiverse existed, it would not do any such thing as "anthropic selection" in the sense of selecting creatures like us, living in civilizations and enjoying long lives and having the ability to speak languages. It would be true that only observers could observe, but it would be almost infinitely more likely that chance would produce low-intelligence observers with very short lifespans not enjoying all of the conveniences we enjoy such as a pleasant planet, long lives, and metal abundances allowing long-lasting civilizations. And a multiverse would do nothing to explain why our universe was so lucky (as opposed to some universe). For a full discussion of the fallacies in trying to evoke a multiverse to explain our universe's fine-tuned features, see my posts here and here. 
• The "explained by a Darwinian process occurring in the cosmos (e.g. baby universes inside black holes)" answer is a reference to Lee Smolin's very silly, groundless and extremely speculative theory he called "cosmological natural selection." In a 2004 paper (page 38) Smolin said that the theory made a prediction, the prediction that "the upper mass limit of neutron stars is less than 1.6 solar masses." This prediction failed. The most massive known neutron star is PSR J0952-0607, which has a mass of approximately 2.35 times of the mass of the sun. 

The word "beachhead" is a military term referring to an initial position on an enemy-dominated territory, a position serving as a foothold for further expansion. We can describe the situation in regard to belief in intelligent design among physicists like this: the idea of an intelligent designer behind cosmic fine-tuning is an idea that now has a foothold or beachhead among physicists. We should not be surprised at all if this foothold is followed by a much greater expansion. The beachhead may turn into a breakout, maybe even something like the breakout of Patron's Third Army in August, 1940, arising from the beachhead at Normandy.  Today's 9% physicist belief in intelligent design could easily expand to be 20% or 30% within a few decades. 

A similar poll questions was answered by academic philosophers. As discussed in my post here, in that poll, more philosophers said they believed in a "design" explanation for "cosmological fine-tuning" than the percentage believing in "multiverse" as an explanation. This was despite the fact that academic departments of philosophy have long been environments in which atheistic thinking is predominant. 

The idea of pondering only the fine-tuned physics of our universe when considering the explanation for such fine-tuning is an approach that is defective. The more sensible approach is to consider the collective weight of all the cases of fine-tuning that we observe in nature, which include things that are tangible (such as human bodies) and things that are intangible (such as fundamental constants of physics). 

We now have more than 50 years of work in modern physics establishing how the habitability of our universe depends on just-right characteristics of numerous laws and fundamental constants of the universe. I document in my post here some of the physics papers that documented this reality in the 1970's. Work of this type continues. A 2023 paper by a physicist states the following:

"The values of some fundamental physical constants are considered to be finely tuned and balanced to give our observable world. Examples include finely tuned balance between quark masses needed to produce protons and neutrons ...and production of heavy nuclei in stars, which depends on the finely tuned balance between the fine structure constant ...and the ratio of the proton mass ..and electron mass...These and other examples suggest a narrow 'habitable zone' in parameter space...where essential biochemical elements can form... For this reason, fundamental constants are referred to as 'biofriendly' or 'biophilic' ....We need to tune the same fundamental constants setting α and β (ℏ, e, c, me, mp) that, importantly, involves tuning, which is additional and different to tuning involved in fixing α and β....We can conjecture that multiple independent tunings were involved. This includes tuning fundamental constants to produce heavy nuclei and additional tunings needed for other observed sustainable structures to emerge." -- Kostya Trachenko, "Constraints on fundamental physical constants from bio-friendly viscosity and diffusion" (link).

Fine-Tuning Denialism Can Lead to Largely Wasted Careers in Science

It seems that throughout his career, cosmologist Ethan Siegel has been the epitome of an "old guard" scientist -- someone dedicated to defending old speculative theories of physicists and cosmologists, mostly theories that have never been well-supported by observations. Year after year, Siegel keeps making the case for theories that somehow got popular among little cliques of physicists or cosmologists, but which never got any good evidence in their favor: theories such as supersymmetry (SUSY), primordial cosmic inflation, and dark matter. Don't be fooled by the hype of the latest "dark matter map" claim, discussed here; we still have the situation that no one has seen dark matter. 

Reading Siegel's posts is rather like reading some old monk argue for the old dogmas of some old organized religion, very much a kind of "you must keep believing as they taught me in college four decades ago" affair. A 2024 post by Siegel tries to explain why scientists have not given up on a theory they spent decades on, but which was never supported by any observations: the theory of supersymmetry (SUSY). For quite a few years around 2010, physicists were publishing about 1500 papers per year on this theory. 

The post by Siegel begins with a silly-sounding statement: "One of the greatest ideas in all of physics, regardless of whether it turns out to be a true idea that reflects reality or not, is that of supersymmetry, or SUSY for short." How unwise to think that a theory is "one of the greatest ideas in all of physics" regardless of whether such an idea is true or false. 

Although having a title of "The one reason that physicists won’t give up on supersymmetry," Siegel's post fails to explain what that reason is, in any way that the average reader will be able to follow.  I can explain more clearly the real reason why some physicists have not given up on the theory of supersymmetry, despite the lack of any evidence for it: it is that such a theory serves as an atheist analgesic pill, helping slightly to relieve the pain that atheist physicists feel when encountering the enormous fine-tuning within the universe's physics and biology. 

The supersymmetry theory arose as a speculative attempt to explain away (or kind of sweep under the rug) a case of cosmic fine-tuning that bothered scientists. The issue of the fine-tuning of the Higgs mass (the mass of the Higgs boson) was skillfully explained by physicist Ben Allanach in an  article at the Aeon site: 

"Behind the question of mass, an even bigger and uglier problem was lurking in the background of the Standard Model: why is the Higgs boson so light? In experiments it weighed in at 125 times the mass of a proton. But calculations using the theory implied that it should be much bigger – roughly ten million billion times bigger, in fact....Quantum fluctuations of ultra-heavy particle pairs should have a profound effect on the Higgs boson, whose mass is very sensitive to them....One logical option is that nature has chosen the initial value of the Higgs boson mass to precisely offset these quantum fluctuations, to an accuracy of one in 10¹⁶. However, that possibility seems remote at best, because the initial value and the quantum fluctuation have nothing to do with each other. It would be akin to dropping a sharp pencil onto a table and having it land exactly upright, balanced on its point. In physics terms, the configuration of the pencil is unnatural or fine-tuned. Just as the movement of air or tiny vibrations should make the pencil fall over, the mass of the Higgs shouldn’t be so perfectly calibrated that it has the ability to cancel out quantum fluctuations. However, instead of an uncanny correspondence, maybe the naturalness problem with the Higgs boson could be explained away by a new, more foundational theory: supersymmetry."

In an article in Symmetry magazine, we have a similar explanation:

"To understand what’s fishy about the observable Higgs mass being so low, first you must know that it is actually the sum of two inputs: the bare Higgs mass (which we don’t know) plus contributions from all the other Standard Model particles, contributions collectively known as 'quantum corrections.' The second number in the equation is an enormous negative, coming in around minus 10¹⁸ GeV. Compared to that, the result of the equation, 125 GeV, is extremely small, close to zero. That means the first number, the bare Higgs mass, must be almost the opposite, to so nearly cancel it out. To some physicists, this is an unacceptably strange coincidence."

How big a coincidence? The Symmetry article later quotes physicist Lawrence Lee Jr. as saying “the conundrum with the Higgs mass, which would require fine-tuning on the order of 1-in-10³⁴,” which is a coincidence like the coincidence of you correctly guessing the full phone numbers of three consecutive strangers. 

Scientists should have just accepted this case of very precise fine-tuning in nature.  But instead, many of them made a long, quixotic, futile attempt to overthrow it (like someone trying to overthrow the observation that the sun is hot, with some elaborate theory trying to explain how the sun isn't really hot).  Why did they do that? Because they had a motivation, an ideological motivation rather than the motivation of simply discovering truth. Their ideological motivation was related to a belief that the universe should not be anything that looked like a product of design. This ideological motivation is clearly stated in a Symmetry article by physicist Lee, who states it as follows: “In general, what we want from our theories—and in some way, our universe—is that nothing seems too contrived.” If you want for the universe to not "seem too contrived," then you may twist yourself into knots trying to explain away cases of apparent fine-tuning in the universe. 

An article makes it rather clear that the supersymmetry theory was mainly motivated by a desire to get rid of a case of fine-tuning, and make the universe look like it was a little less lucky, a little less  providentially blessed. We read this:

"For example, the small mass of the Higgs boson is notoriously difficult to explain—its calculation requires subtracting two very large numbers that just happen to be slightly different from each other. 'But if you add supersymmetry, this takes care of all these cancellations such that you can get a light Higgs mass without needing to have such luck,' says Elodie Resseguie, a postdoc at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory."

The small mass of the Higgs boson is one of only very many cases of fine-tuning in nature.  There are many very precise examples of fine-tuning needed for our universe to be habitable, such as the very precise matching of the absolute value of the proton charge and the electron charge needed for planets and stars to be able to hold together (explained by the astronomer Greenstein here).  There are many times more cases of fine-tuning in biology, such as the endless thousands or millions of different types of very precisely fine-tuned protein molecules, with functional thresholds so high they cannot be credibly explained by Darwinian evolution.  A functional threshold is a particular amount of arrangement of parts that must exist for something to have any functional value.  With protein molecules, the functional threshold is typically so high it involves thousands of very well-arranged atoms. 

The visual below depicts a scientist who clings to some old, failing theory trying to explain some of this fine-tuning:  

The old theory serves as an atheist analgesic, helping slightly to relieve the irritation the scientist feels when encountering the endless examples of fine-tuning in nature:

Below is an interesting graph I got after using the Google Ngram viewer to search for references in Google Books for the terms "supersymmetry" and "fine-tuning."  We see that supersymmetry theory had its peak around 1980, and has been in decline since then. But we have ever-more references to fine-tuning, very many of them references to fine-tuning in physics and biology.  It seems that the efforts of scientists to sweep under the rug fine-tuning are not succeeding. 
 

Siegel's 2024 post that I discussed above is entitled "The one reason that physicists won’t give up on supersymmetry." But a recent article in Quanta Magazine does not tell any such "sticking to their creed" story. That article instead rather has a kind of "hubris has been humbled" ring to it, with kind of a "they're fumbling around and losing their confidence" sound to it. The article is entitled "Is Particle Physics Dead, Dying, or Just Hard?" We have a quote from one guy saying, "I think that it’s kind of irrelevant what we plan on a 10-year timescale, because if we’re building a collider in 10 years, AI will be building the collider; humans won’t be building it." Anyone familiar with how utterly enormous is the physical work involved in the building of a giant particle collider may realize how inane this statement is. 

Philosophers Prefer "Design" Over "Multiverse" As an Explanation of Cosmic Fine-Tuning

Prior to Darwin, William Paley made a famous analogy in his book Natural Theology, the analogy of a someone walking along a beach and finding a watch. Paley argued that it would be unreasonable for any such person to deny that such a thing (with so purposeful an arrangement of so many parts) was a product of design; and that it is just as unreasonable to deny that the purposeful arrangement of parts we see so abundantly in biological organisms is the product of design. The phony legend arose that Darwin did something to answer Paley's argument; but he did not. Darwin never mentioned Paley's famous analogy in any of his chief writings. Darwin never credibly explained how some fine-tuned arrangement of very many parts to meet a particular function end could be naturally achieved. Darwin's paid almost no attention to the huge fine-tuned complexity and component interdependence in organisms. 

In the twentieth century, the evidence for what looks like purposeful design in organisms increased enormously, as scientists discovered the enormous organization and component interdependence of hundreds of types of humans cells and thousands of types of protein molecules, very high levels of functional complexity Darwin knew nothing about. In the late twentieth century, it began to become clear that there was a second gigantic basis for believing in design in nature: the fine-tuning of the universe's fundamental constants and laws. It turns out that the universe must be very specially arranged for there to be any possibility of there being creatures such as human beings and civilizations such as our civilization. The table below helps to show some of the requirements. The color coding helps to show how the same things recur as requirements for multiple things. 

I will now explain why each item has the requirements I have listed.

Row 1 (Higgs field): The Higgs field (related to the Higgs boson) is said to give mass to other particles. Scientists are puzzled by why the Higgs field has the strength it has, and they say that it seems to require fine-tuning to 15 decimal places. This is a problem called the hierarchy problem or the naturalness problem. It is discussed in this scientific paper entitled The Higgs: so simple yet so unnatural. As a Daily Galaxy article put it, “Using theory as it currently stands, the mass of the Higgs boson can only be explained as the result of a random fine-tuning of the physical constants of the universe at a level of accuracy of one in one quadrillion.”

Row 2 (up quarks and down quarks, electrons): The particles in the nuclei of atoms (protons and neutrons) are made up of smaller particles called up quarks and down quarks. A requirement of the large-scale existence of up quarks and down quarks (and also electrons) is what scientists call matter/antimatter asymmetry (a situation where matter is vastly more abundant than antimatter). This is a puzzle to scientists, because the standard model of physics seems to predict that matter and antimatter should have existed in equal amounts at the time of the Big Bang, which would have caused both types of particles to collide with each other and convert into energy, leaving almost nothing but energy in the universe. A requirement for electrons is the Higgs field, and on this page a physicist says that the electron would not have mass without the Higgs field. 

Row 3 (protons, neutrons): The simple requirement is that there be up quarks and down quarks, discussed in the previous paragraph.

Row 4 (hydrogen atoms): The requirement for a hydrogen atom is that you have one proton and one electron, and also the electromagnetic force, the force of attraction between a proton and an electron. Without that force, electrons would not have any tendency to orbit a nucleus.

Row 5 (galaxies): Galaxies are huge collections of stars. There are many requirements for the formation of galaxies after the Big Bang. The universe had to begin with a fine-tuned expansion rate, as a slighter higher rate would have caused an expansion too fast for galaxies to form, and a slightly slower rate would have caused all matter to collapse into superdense black holes. Scientists also say that numerous other things had to be just right (the other items listed in this row). One requirement is primordial density perturbations greater than .000001 and less than .0001, as explained here. One particularly severe requirement seems to involve dark energy, which is regarded pretty much the same as the cosmological constant. Cosmologists conclude that the level of dark energy seems to have been fine-tuned to something like 1 part in 10⁶⁰ or one part in 10¹²⁰. The issue, called the vacuum catastrophe, has been fretted over by many physicists. This paper refers to the “tremendous, unsolved naturalness problem” posed by the cosmological constant.
 
Row 6 (carbon atoms): This row refers to the abundant existence of carbon atoms, something which ends up having lots of requirements. Besides the previously mentioned requirements for the hydrogen atom (protons, electrons, and the electromagnetic force), there are the additional requirements of the neutron and the strong nuclear force (the two of them allow you to have a carbon nucleus that holds together, despite the mutual repulsion between the protons). There is also the requirement that you have a law of nature called the Pauli Exclusion Principle, something that is quite necessary for both solid matter and complex carbon bonds. Then there is an additional requirement for something called nuclear resonances, which assures that carbon is produced in abundant quantities by stars through a process called the triple alpha process. Without this additional requirement, there would not be enough carbon (which wasn't produced in the Big Bang). This point has been widely discussed by scientists such as Hoyle, and in this scientific paper stating that a 0.4% change in one parameter would have left us without a universe abundant in both carbon and oxygen. An additional requirement that I had no space to list in my table is the requirement that the neutron mass be higher than the proton mass.

Row 7 (oxygen atoms): Oxygen atoms have all the same requirements of carbon atoms, including the same special requirement involving nuclear resonances, necessary for oxygen to be produced by stars in abundant amounts. The scientific paper here argues that there would not be much oxygen without the weak nuclear force, so I have also listed that as a requirement. 

Row 8 (Heavier atoms): By heavier atoms I mean all atoms than have more than about 25 protons (which includes copper, lead, silver, gold, zinc, tin, and probably also iron). These types of atoms have most of the same requirements of carbon atoms and oxygen atoms, except that to have these atoms in abundance you don't need nuclear resonances but instead the stellar explosions called supernovae explosions (explosions of stars that produce heavy elements such as lead and iron). These supernovae explosions require a tiny particle called the neutrino and a force called the weak nuclear force.

Row 9 (Sunlike stars): I may define sunlike stars as those that are white, yellow, or orange (or some combination of those colors). Sunlike stars require galaxies (since if galaxies had not formed, there would be no stars). Sunlike stars also require a very delicate fine-tuning of some of the most fundamental constants of nature. The physicist Paul Davies says on page 73 of The Accidental Universe: “If gravity were very slightly weaker, or electromagnetism very slightly stronger (or the electron slightly less massive relative to the proton), all stars would be red dwarfs. A correspondingly tiny change the other way, and they would all be blue giants.” Blue giants are too-short lived for life to evolve near them, and red dwarf stars are not believed to be as favorable for life's evolution as sunlike stars. 

Row 10 (water): Water requires oxygen atoms and hydrogen atoms, as we can tell from its formula H₂0. Because of its remarkable features that make it unique among liquids, there are probably additional requirements for water, but I haven't listed them.

Row 11 (stable planets): One requirement for stable planets is gravitation, the force that holds planets and stars together. But there is another very interesting requirement: that the electric charge of the proton exactly match the electric charge of the electron, to many decimal places. Electromagnetism (the fundamental force involving electric charges) is roughly 10³⁶ times stronger than gravitation, the weakest of the fundamental forces by far. Consequently a very slight mismatch between the charge of the electron and the proton would cause electromagnetism (roughly a trillion trillion trillion times stronger than gravitation) to completely overwhelm the gravity holding the planet together. In his book The Symbiotic Universe, astronomer George Greenstein (a professor emeritus at Amherst College) says this about the equality of the proton and electron charges: "Relatively small things like stones, people, and the like would fly apart if the two charges differed by as little as one part in 100 billion. Large structures like the Earth and the Sun require for their existence a yet more perfect balance of one part in a billion billion." In fact, experiments do indicate that the charge of the proton and the electron match to eighteen decimal places. 

A curious coincidence

Row 12 (nucleotides): Nucleotides are molecules that are the building blocks of RNA and DNA, molecules essential for life. Nucleotides require three types of atoms mentioned above (carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms), as well as phosphorus atoms. They also require physics to be arranged in a way that allows for atoms to combine to make molecules consisting of multiple atoms.

Row 13 (genetic code): The genetic code is a semantic framework used by DNA and RNA, one in which particular combination of nucleotides stand for particular amino acids. The genetic code could roughly be called the software used by DNA and RNA. The origin of this code is one of science's great mysteries. We do not know how this code (required for all biological evolution) appeared from mere chemicals. This is the “code from chemicals” problem described in this blog post.

Row 14 (RNA): RNA is one of the two main molecules used by all living things, and it is believed to have preceded the more well-known and more complicated molecule DNA. It requires nucleotides (from which RNA is built), as well as the genetic code and water (as a substrate).

Row 15 (DNA): DNA requires nucleotides (from which it is built), as well as the genetic code and water. I also list RNA as a requirement since it is believed that RNA was a necessary predecessor of DNA.

Row 16 (Proteins, cells): Proteins are made by DNA and RNA using the genetic code. Requirements include water and amino acids (which I didn't list in the table for space reasons).

Row 17 (Photosynthesis): Photosynthesis is the process by which plants convert sunlight to chemical energy. Recent studies suggest that photosynthesis uses exotic quantum effects.

Row 18 (Civilizations near sunlike stars): Now we come to the last and most important row, which mentions civilizations such as our civilization. There are many requirements for such a civilization. All of the items on the 17 previous rows on the table are indirect or direct requirements of civilizations near sunlike stars. The well-understood direct requirements of such civilizations are heavier atoms (needed so that the civilization can have the metals needed for technology), sunlike stars, stable planets, proteins, cells, and photosynthesis (the last one being necessary even if the beings in a civilization ate nothing but meat, because they would still rely on a food chain that would require photosynthesis).

There are probably quite a few additional requirements for organisms such as humans and technological civilizations. The table does not even mention the requirement that the universe's initial entropy be enormously smaller than expected, one that cosmologist Roger Penrose has cited as being vastly improbable by chance, while mentioning on this page a "chance of a universe allowing intelligent life" probability of about 1 in 10 to the 10 to the 124th power (less than the chance of you correctly guessing the phone numbers of everyone in your neighborhood). The table does not even mention homochirality, an unexplained characteristic of earthly life (seemingly impossible by chance) that may require additional special physics fine-tuning to explain. The table does not mention protein-folding, the unexplained phenomenon (necessary for our existence) in which chains of amino acids form quickly into very complex just-right 3D structures needed for the existence of functional protein molecules. That may also require  additional special physics fine-tuning. We have no idea of how proteins are able to form so quickly into the very many types of protein complexes needed for our existence (often called "molecular machines"), and such ever-occurring purposeful-seeming assembly (seemingly inexplicable under our current understanding)  may also require  additional special physics fine-tuning. And those who think that brains give rise to minds often end up appealing to special fine-tuned physics to try to explain the arising of minds. 

Another way to visualize cosmic fine-tuning is to imagine a slot machine with a big handle on its right. The slot machine can produce the jackpot of cosmic habitability (a universe allowing creatures like us), but only on something like 1 try in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 -- because each of its rows has to have a special match that is very unlikely to occur. 

Below are some quotes by scientists on this topic of cosmic fine-tuning, quotes in which scientists confess to its reality. 

• "The universe appears designed." -- Stephen Hawking, in a statement to physicist Thomas Hertog (link). 
• "The laws of nature form a system that is extremely fine-tuned, and very little in physical law can be altered without destroying the possibility of the development of life as we know it.” -- Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow,  The Grand Design (page 161),
• "The simple FLRW-based ΛCDM lambda cold cark matter] model has been so successful in fitting data. However one of its ‘simple’ parameters is the Cosmological Constant Λ which, interpreted as the energy density of the quantum vacuum, would require fine-tuning of two unrelated terms to at least 60 decimal places to enable the Universe to exist in its present form. It is clear that simplicity is in the eye of the beholder." -- Four scientists, "Colloquium: The Cosmic Dipole Anomaly" (link). 
• "Of all the universes that could exist, ours is spectacularly well configured to bring forth life....The universe’s biofriendliness, it turns out, concerns the laws of physics themselves. There are numerous features in these laws that render the universe just right for living things...But the density of vacuum energy seems to be 10¹²⁰ times lower than physicists expect based on theory. If the vacuum energy density of the universe were just a tad larger, however, its repulsive effect would be stronger and acceleration would have kicked in much earlier. This would have meant that matter was so sparsely distributed that it couldn’t clump together to form stars and galaxies, once again precluding the formation of life. The laws of physics and cosmology have many more such life-engendering properties. It almost feels as if the universe is a fix – a big one." -- Physicist Thomas Hertog (link).
• "We conclude that a change of more than 0.5 % in the strength of the strong interaction or more than 4 % change in the strength of the Coulomb force would destroy either nearly all C [carbon] or all O [oxygen] in every star. This implies that irrespective of stellar evolution the contribution of each star to the abundance of C or O in the ISM would be negligible. Therefore, for the above cases the creation of carbon-based life in our universe would be strongly disfavoured." -- Oberhummer, Csot, and Schlattl, "Stellar Production Rates of Carbon and Its Abundance in the Universe."
• "From 1953 onward, Willy Fowler and I have always been intrigued by the remarkable relation of the 7.65 Mev energy level in the nucleus of ¹²C [Carbon 12 isotope] to the 7.12 Mev level in ¹⁶O [Oxygen 16 isotope]. If you wanted to produce carbon and oxygen in roughly equal quantities by stellar nucleosynthesis, these are the two levels you have to fix, and your fixing would have to be just where these levels are actually found to be. Another put-up job? Following the above argument, I am inclined to think so.  A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature."  -- Astronomer Fred Hoyle, "The Universe -- Past and Present Reflections" (link). 
• "The cosmological constant must be tuned to 120 decimal places and there are also many mysterious ‘coincidences’ involving the physical constants that appear to be necessary for life, or any form of information processing, to exist....Fred Hoyle first pointed out, the beryllium would decay before interacting with another alpha particle were it not for the existence of a remarkably finely-tuned resonance in this interaction. Heinz Oberhummer has studied this resonance in detail and showed how the amount of oxygen and carbon produced in red giant stars varies with the strength and range of the nucleon interactions. His work indicates that these must be tuned to at least 0.5% if one is to produce both these elements to the extent required for life."  -- Physicists B.J. Carr and M.J. Rees, "Fine-Tuning in Living Systems." 
• "The Standard Model [of physics] is regarded as a highly 'unnatural' theory. Aside from having a large number of different particles and forces, many of which seem surplus to requirement, it is also very precariously balanced. If you change any of the 20+ numbers that have to be put into the theory even a little, you rapidly find yourself living in a universe without atoms. This spooky fine-tuning worries many physicists, leaving the universe looking as though it has been set up in just the right way for life to exist." -- Harry Cliff, particle physicist, in a Scientific American article.
• "If the parameters defining the physics of our universe departed from their present values, the observed rich structure and complexity would not be supported....Thirty-one such dimensionless parameters were identified that specify our universe. Fine-tuning refers to the observation that if any of these numbers took a slightly different value, the qualitative features of our universe would change dramatically. Our large, long-lived universe with a hierarchy of complexity from the sub-atomic to the galactic is the result of particular values of these parameters." -- Jeffrey M. Shainline, physicist (link). 
• "The overall result is that, because multiverse hypotheses do not predict the fine-tuning for this universe any better than a single universe hypothesis, the multiverse hypotheses fail as explanations for cosmic fine-tuning. Conversely, the fine-tuning data does not support the multiverse hypotheses." -- physicist V. Palonen, "Bayesian considerations on the multiverse explanation of cosmic fine-tuning."
• "A mere 1 percent offset between the charge of the electron and that of the proton would lead to a catastrophic repulsion....My entire body would dissolve in a massive explosion...The very Earth itself, the planet as a whole, would crack open and fly apart in an annihilating explosion...This is what would happen were the electron's charge to exceed the proton's by 1 percent. The opposite case, in which the proton's charge exceeded the electron's, would lead to the identical situation...How precise must the balance be?...Relatively small things like atoms, people and the like would fly apart if the charges differed by as little as one part in 100 billion. Larger structures like the Earth and the Sun require for their existence a yet more perfect balance of one part in a billion billion." -- Astronomy professor emeritus George Greenstein, "The Symbiotic Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos," pages 63-64. 
• "What is particularly striking is how sensitive the possibility of life in our universe is to a small change in these constants. For example, if the constant that controls the way the electromagnetic field behaves in a vacuum is changed by four percent, then fusion in stars could not produce carbon....Change the cosmological constant in the 123rd decimal place and suddenly it's impossible to have a habitable galaxy." --  Marcus Du Sautoy, Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, "The Great Unknown," page 221. 
• "The evolution of the cosmos is determined by initial conditions (such as the initial rate of expansion and the initial mass of matter), as well as by fifteen or so numbers called physical constants (such as the speed of the light and the mass of the electron). We have by now measured these physical constants with extremely high precision, but we have failed to come up with any theory explaining why they have their particular values. One of the most surprising discoveries of modern cosmology is the realization that the initial conditions and physical constants of the universe had to be adjusted with exquisite precision if they are to allow the emergence of conscious observers. This realization is referred to as the 'anthropic principle'...Change the initial conditions and physical constants ever so slightly, and the universe would be empty and sterile; we would not be around to discuss it. The precision of this fine-tuning is nothing short of stunning. The initial rate of expansion of the universe, to take just one example, had to have been tweaked to a precision comparable to that of an archer trying to land an arrow in a 1-square-centimeter target located on the fringes of the universe, 15 billion light years away!" -- Trinh Xuan Thuan, Professor of Astronomy, University of Virginia, “Chaos and Harmony”  p. 235.
• "If we are indeed simply requiring suitable conditions for the evolution of intelligent life just here, then the figure of ~ [1 in 10 to the 10 to the 124th power] that  we appear to find for the improbability of the universe conditions that we actually seem to find ourselves in is ridiculously smaller than the much more modest figure needed just for ourselves."  -- Cosmologist Roger Penrose,  "Fashion, faith and fantasy in the new physics of the universe," page 313 (link).

One way to gauge whether a "deliberate design" interpretation of cosmic fine-tuning is intellectually respectable is to look for how many philosophers accept such an interpretation.  Before answering that question (giving an answer supplied by a poll), I must give some background information on the current academic environment of philosophers.  Professors of philosophy work in a conformist academia environment in which atheistic ideas are predominant. Departments of philosophy have long been havens for those with a tendency towards secularism, atheism and materialism. 

According to the paper here, " The 2020 PhilPapers Survey surveyed around 2000 philosophers on 100 philosophical questions." Here is one of the questions that the survey asked about: 

Cosmological fine-tuning (what explains it?)
Design	140	17.3
Multiverse	122	15.1
Brute fact	259	32.1
No fine-tuning	175	21.7
Other	144	17.8

The first number column is the number of philosophy department faculty members giving a particular answer, and the second number column is what percentage gave that answer. 

The most popular answer of "Brute fact" amounts to saying "There is no explanation." In philosophy a "brute fact" is something that exists without any explanation. Whenever anyone claims that something is a brute fact, it is a confession of explanatory bankruptcy. The man who says "it's a brute fact" is someone saying, "I have no explanation, and there is no explanation." "Brute fact" as an answer to this question has no credibility. 

Also with no credibility is the "no fine-tuning" answer given by 17% of the respondents. It is obvious from the information and quotes above that cosmic fine-tuning is a very substantial reality. 

The "multiverse" answer refers to attempts to explain cosmic fine-tuning by postulating some infinity or near-infinity of universes. So desperate an explanation has no credibility, for reasons discussed in my posts here and here. An important relevant point is that you do not do anything to increase the chance of any one universe being habitable by imagining the existence of other universes. 

It is very interesting that in the poll above, the interpretation of "design" (endorsed by 17.3 % of the polled philosophers) scored higher than the interpretation of "multiverse" (endorsed by 15.1 % of the polled philosophers). Clearly atheists are telling a phony story when they claim that it is no longer intellectually respectable to claim that nature shows signs of a cosmic designer. Such an interpretation (one assuming a cosmic designer) is supported by a decent fraction of philosophers, despite such philosophers working in an environment in which such an interpretation is discouraged and stigmatized and frowned upon. And any interpretation supported by a decent fraction of philosophers (some of the smartest people in colleges and universities) should be regarded as very intellectually respectable. 

Materialists Offer Only the Clumsiest Responses to Cosmic Fine-Tuning

 In the last quarter of the twentieth century, scientists began to consider very many reasons why the existence of life in a universe such as ours required for the laws and fundamental constants of the universe to be very precisely fine-tuned. What looked like very precise fine-tuning was found again and again, in places such as the expansion rate of the universe at its earliest instant, and the precise balance between the absolute value of the charge of every proton and the exactly equal absolute value of the charge on every electron (despite the rest mass of protons and electrons differing by a factor of 1836).  Below are some quotes by scientists who discuss such fine-tuning:

• "We conclude that a change of more than 0.5 % in the strength of the strong interaction or more than 4 % change in the strength of the Coulomb force would destroy either nearly all C [carbon] or all O [oxygen] in every star. This implies that irrespective of stellar evolution the contribution of each star to the abundance of C or O in the ISM would be negligible. Therefore, for the above cases the creation of carbon-based life in our universe would be strongly disfavoured." -- Oberhummer, Csot, and Schlattl, "Stellar Production Rates of Carbon and Its Abundance in the Universe."
• "The Standard Model [of physics] is regarded as a highly 'unnatural' theory. Aside from having a large number of different particles and forces, many of which seem surplus to requirement, it is also very precariously balanced. If you change any of the 20+ numbers that have to be put into the theory even a little, you rapidly find yourself living in a universe without atoms. This spooky fine-tuning worries many physicists, leaving the universe looking as though it has been set up in just the right way for life to exist." -- Harry Cliff, particle physicist, in a Scientific American article.
• "If the parameters defining the physics of our universe departed from their present values, the observed rich structure and complexity would not be supported....Thirty-one such dimensionless parameters were identified that specify our universe. Fine-tuning refers to the observation that if any of these numbers took a slightly different value, the qualitative features of our universe would change dramatically. Our large, long-lived universe with a hierarchy of complexity from the sub-atomic to the galactic is the result of particular values of these parameters." -- Jeffrey M. Shainline, physicist (link). 
• "The overall result is that, because multiverse hypotheses do not predict the fine-tuning for this universe any better than a single universe hypothesis, the multiverse hypotheses fail as explanations for cosmic fine-tuning. Conversely, the fine-tuning data does not support the multiverse hypotheses." -- physicist V. Palonen, "Bayesian considerations on the multiverse explanation of cosmic fine-tuning."
• "A mere 1 percent offset between the charge of the electron and that of the proton would lead to a catastrophic repulsion....My entire body would dissolve in a massive explosion...The very Earth itself, the planet as a whole, would crack open and fly apart in an annihilating explosion...This is what would happen were the electron's charge to exceed the proton's by 1 percent. The opposite case, in which the proton's charge exceeded the electron's, would lead to the identical situation...How precise must the balance be?...Relatively small things like atoms, people and the like would fly apart if the charges differed by as little as one part in 100 billion. Larger structures like the Earth and the Sun require for their existence a yet more perfect balance of one part in a billion billion." -- Astronomy professor emeritus George Greenstein, "The Symbiotic Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos," pages 63-64. 
• "The evolution of the cosmos is determined by initial conditions (such as the initial rate of expansion and the initial mass of matter), as well as by fifteen or so numbers called physical constants (such as the speed of the light and the mass of the electron). We have by now measured these physical constants with extremely high precision, but we have failed to come up with any theory explaining why they have their particular values. One of the most surprising discoveries of modern cosmology is the realization that the initial conditions and physical constants of the universe had to be adjusted with exquisite precision if they are to allow the emergence of conscious observers. This realization is referred to as the 'anthropic principle'...Change the initial conditions and physical constants ever so slightly, and the universe would be empty and sterile; we would not be around to discuss it. The precision of this fine-tuning is nothing short of stunning. The initial rate of expansion of the universe, to take just one example, had to have been tweaked to a precision comparable to that of an archer trying to land an arrow in a 1-square-centimeter target located on the fringes of the universe, 15 billion light years away!" -- Trinh Xuan Thuan, Professor of Astronomy, University of Virginia, “Chaos and Harmony”  p. 235.

Materialists have always been very annoyed by all this talk by scientists about how very fine-tuned our universe is. So it is no surprise that they attempted a response. The main response by materialists has been the clumsiest response that they could have made.  This response was the speculation of a multiverse -- that there exists some infinity or near infinity of universes.  Materialists started saying things such as "There could be some infinity of universes, each with different characteristics, and with all those universes, it is not surprising that one of them had characteristics compatible with living creatures such as us."

There are quite a few reasons why imagining a multiverse is the clumsiest way possible for a materialist to respond to cosmic fine-tuning:

1. A multiverse explanation is the worst imaginable violation of Occam's Razor

Occam's Razor is the long-honored principle that “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity” when explaining things, or that we should prefer to explain things as simply as possible. A multiverse is the greatest imaginable violation of the principle of Occam's Razor. A multiverse is what you might propose if you were following the exact opposite principle, a very stupid principle of “entities should be multiplied to the greatest number possible” when trying to explain something (a demented principle we might call “Anti-Occam's Razor”).

2. A theory of a multiverse is unverifiable metaphysics that can never be confirmed by observations

Although often made within scientific discussions, the theory of a multiverse is a metaphysical theory which can never be confirmed through scientific observations (despite insinuations to the contrary by multiverse proponents). Contrary to what some have claimed, looking for evidence of some unusual “flow” in some part of our universe could never confirm a theory of a multiverse, nor could any observations of early universe conditions. Such observations would at best imply that there was something that we did not understand about our universe, or that perhaps there was some “sister universe'' next to our universe (although such an area should more properly just be considered an unobserved part of our universe). We could never make any observations from our universe that would confirm that there are a vast number of other universes with different characteristics.

3. A multiverse explanation “proves” the wrong thing – that some universe would be habitable (without increasing the chance that our universe would be habitable)

Another problem with the multiverse reasoning is that it “proves” the wrong thing. An effective theory of multiple universes would be one that showed a likelihood that our universe would have the characteristics necessary for life purely by chance. The multiverse theory does not claim to show that. Instead it claims to show that “some universe” would by chance have the properties necessary for life. Now you may say: “some universe” and “our universe” – so what, no big difference. But there actually is a gigantic difference between the two. Confusing “some universe” and “our universe” (thinking as if they were the same) is an error in logic, an example of careless, sloppy thinking.

I can best illustrate the point by mentioning the case of a lottery. The Powerball lottery is a lottery with an incredibly low chance of winning, and a gigantic jackpot. Each year they sell enough Powerball lottery tickets to make sure that at least one person will win, but the chance of any lottery ticket buyer winning is less than 1 in a million. So consider these odds (which might be pondered by a couple that purchased a ticket):

Chance of some ticket winning: 100%

Chance of our ticket winning: less than 1 in 1,000,000

So as we can see, there is a gigantic world of difference in this case between “some ticket” and “our ticket.” There is an equally gigantic world of difference between “some universe” and “our universe” when we consider universes. Showing that some universe (under a multiverse theory) would be successful does not show that our universe would be successful.

In fact, the multiverse scenario does absolutely nothing to make it more likely that our particular universe would by chance have the characteristics necessary for intelligent life. If the chance of our universe being successful were 1 in a billion trillion quadrillion before we assume the multiverse, that chance is exactly the same even after we assume a multiverse.

When mathematicians talk about probability, they speak of a trial as being something that might produce a favorable outcome (examples are a roll of a dice, a dealing of 5 cards from a deck, or a purchase of a lottery ticket). But it is a general rule of probability that increasing the number of trials does not increase the chance of success of any one trial.

From a purely explanatory standpoint, a multiverse is therefore the ultimate absurdity: a theory that introduces infinite baggage that serves no explanatory purpose, because it does not increase the odds of our universe being successful. The thing that a multiverse “explains” (some universe being successful) is not what we need to have an explanation for (the fact that our universe was successful despite such enormous odds).

I can illustrate the futility of a multiverse explanation with the following lines of dialog:

John: It required so many improbable coincidences for our universe to have intelligent life – what could be the explanation?

James: A lucky “1 in a zillion” accident – pure blind luck.

John: That's too farfetched, because it would have required something like a 1 in a 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 shot.

James: Well, there could be a multiverse. Maybe there's an infinite number of universes. Some of them might have got lucky.

John: An interesting thought. But still, why was our particular universe so lucky?

James: A lucky “1 in a zillion” accident – pure blind luck.

Here James has introduced an extravagant theory that accomplishes nothing. Before introducing his multiverse theory, his explanation for the universe's habitability was a lucky 1 in a “zillion” accident, and he is still stuck with that explanation even after introducing the multiverse scenario. The multiverse theory accomplishes nothing for him.

4. There is no verified case of anything ever being successfully explained by a type of explanation like a multiverse explanation, nor can we plausibly imagine any such case ever being verified

The typical process of rational explanation can be described as follows: (a) examine some thing that needs to be explained; (b) select some type of explanation that has been proven successful for other cases; (c) apply such an explanation to explain the thing that needs to be explained.

For example, if we see something strange in the sky that is unexplained, we can try to explain it by selecting “weather phenomenon” as our type of explanation, because we know that numerous previous items have been successfully explained by postulating weather as the explanation (for example, the morning dew on the grass of your lawn). More adventurously, we can explain the strange thing in the sky as an alien spacecraft. While we do not have a verified case of anything being successfully explained by exactly postulating an extraterrestrial spacecraft, we do have numerous observations that we know have been successfully explained by advancing this type of explanation – numerous strange lights in the sky have been explained successfully by mentioning some type of spacecraft (earthly spacecraft).

But in the case of a multiverse, it is an entirely different story. We have not one single verified case of anything that has ever been successfully explained by advancing any theory like the theory of a multiverse. A multiverse explanation therefore has a singularly low credibility. One can compare it to a totally new type of machine that has never been proven to work before.

For the multiverse enthusiast, this is an insolvable dilemma. We can have no confidence in multiverse explanations until we can have a verified case of this type of explanation explaining something, but it is impossible to reasonably imagine anything ever getting a verified explanation through this type of explanation (whether it be our universe's fitness for life, or anything else).

5. A multiverse theory can “explain” any claim, no matter how absurd; as it can “explain” anything, it explains nothing

A multiverse theory is in fact a kind of inane all-purpose explanation engine. It can be used to “explain” almost any absurdity or any theory no matter how improbable.

Basically whatever crazy theory you wish to believe in, you can justify with multiverse reasoning. Do you want to believe that underground is a vast kingdom of leprechauns, cute little people like those in Irish mythology? Do you want to believe that these little leprechauns are all riding along underground on little unicorns? You can get there with a multiverse. You simply reason that no matter how improbable such a thing may be, we would expect it to have occurred at least once if there are an infinite number of universes.

The graphic below visualizes my point that a multiverse can be used to “explain” any absurdity. A multiverse can be basically used to "explain"  anything. That which explains anything explains nothing. 

The Stupid "You Shouldn't Be Surprised" Response

Another lame response of materialists to cosmic fine-tuning is to make claims that "we should not be surprised" to find ourselves in a universe like the one we live in, on the grounds that any observer would find himself in a universe as fine-tuned as ours.  The fallacy of this line of reasoning is explained in my post "Firing Squads and Habitable Universes: The Fallacy of Appealing to an Observer Selection Effect" which you can read here, and my post "Our Luxury Results Debunk the Multiverse As an Explanation" which you can read here. It is not at all true that any observer would find himself in a universe as fine-tuned as ours. A universe could have much less fine-tuning, and still allow the brief existence of observers without long lives and stable civilizations. The amount of fine-tuning in our universe  is very  much more than the minimum needed for observers. Our universe has a kind of "luxury" level of fine-tuning that enables things much more than just fleeting observers: things we take for granted such as stable stars allowing stable metal-rich civilizations in which people can have luxuries such as long lives, language use and jet plane trips. The idea is schematically depicted below.

The Latest Very Clumsy Attempt by Materialists to Respond to Cosmic Fine-Tuning

The latest example of very lame reasoning in response to cosmic fine-tuning is an article by Daniele Sorini on the website The Conversation. It is an article entitled "Many physicists argue the universe is fine-tuned for life – our findings question this idea."  We have another example of what is enormously common these days -- scientists making a claim about their research that is not justified by anything in their research papers. 

The article resorts to straw-man reasoning. Straw-man reasoning is when you attack some distorted version of an argument or assertion that is rarely or never used by people making that argument or assertion.  Sorini attacks a straw-man version of cosmic fine-tuning. He states, "We may not be inhabiting the most likely of possible universes," as if anyone mentioning cosmic fine-tuning ever made such a claim.   No one claiming cosmic fine-tuning ever claimed that we lived in the most likely of possible universes. Instead, people referring to cosmic fine-tuning claimed the opposite -- that habitable universes are incredibly rare in the set of all possible universes. 

Sorini then discusses how he and his colleagues did some calculations suggesting that if there were more dark energy there might have been more stars and more life.  Sorini appeals to calculations in his paper filled with speculative equations.  Using extremely  speculative reasoning relying on many questionable complex assumptions, Sorini claims that if there were a little more dark energy, there might have been more stars formed, possibly leading to more life. Sorini tries to insinuate that this does something to damage the idea of cosmic fine-tuning, on the grounds that some other possible universe might have produced more life than ours. 

This is a bad example of the fallacy known as straw man reasoning. No one discussing cosmic fine-tuning ever claimed that our universe has special characteristics that cause it to be some universe producing the maximum amount of life that a universe could produce. It has always been very obvious that our universe is not such a universe. Our universe is almost entirely empty space, and the distance between stars is very enormous. We can obviously imagine a universe that would produce much more life per cubic light-year than our universe. We can imagine a universe with many more stars and planets than our universe has, in which the distance between stars is much smaller. Or we can imagine a universe with a uniform temperature, consisting of a giant flat infinite plane entirely inhabited by living beings. We don't need Sorini's dubious rigmarole gobbledygook calculations to figure out that we don't live in a "most life per volume of space" universe. Such a thing has always been obvious. 

Were you to show that some other possible universe could have produced or supported the existence of more life, that does nothing to discredit claims that our universe is very fine-tuned to allow life, in a way that would be impossible or all-but-impossible for chance to have achieved.  Similarly, imagine there is a eight-year-old boy living in a ten-story apartment building equipped with electricity, heating and plumbing.  He might know nothing about how apartment buildings arise, but he would be correct in reasoning that his apartment building could not have appeared by any accident of nature, and that it must have required purposeful design.  His ten-year-old brother would do nothing to undermine such an argument if he said that the apartment building could have supported some more living creatures if it had eleven floors rather than ten. The eight-year-old did not claim that he lived in a building that maximized something; he merely said that he lived in a building with convenient fine-tuned characteristics that chance could not have produced.  The ten-year-old brother's irrelevant statement is comparable to the irrelevant reasoning Sorini is using. 

Just as such an eight-year-old boy would not be claiming that his apartment building is some structure that maximizes the amount of life that any structure could support, people mentioning cosmic-fine tuning have not claimed that our universe is something that maximizes the amount of life that it could hold in its volume (it obviously is not). And just as pointing out that the apartment building could have an additional floor with inhabitants does nothing to discredit the claim that the apartment building was too fine-tuned to be an accident of nature, pointing out or calculating that our universe could have had more life in its volume of space does nothing to discredit the claim that our universe is too fined-tuned to be an accident of nature. 

It is ironic that Sorini is even bringing up the topic of dark energy while trying to discredit the idea of cosmic fine-tuning. In the very topic of dark energy seems to be one of the most powerful cases of cosmic fine-tuning. Dark energy is equivalent to what cosmologists call the cosmological constant, and here is what two scientists said about that topic:

"The cosmological constant must be tuned to 120 decimal places and there are also many mysterious ‘coincidences’ involving the physical constants that appear to be necessary for life, or any form of information processing, to exist....Fred Hoyle first pointed out, the beryllium would decay before interacting with another alpha particle were it not for the existence of a remarkably finely-tuned resonance in this interaction. Heinz Oberhummer has studied this resonance in detail and showed how the amount of oxygen and carbon produced in red giant stars varies with the strength and range of the nucleon interactions. His work indicates that these must be tuned to at least 0.5% if one is to produce both these elements to the extent required for life."  -- Physicists B.J. Carr and M.J. Rees, "Fine-Tuning in Living Systems." 

When they state that "the cosmological constant must be tuned to 120 decimal places," what Carr and Rees refer to is luck as great as the luck you would have if you correctly guessed on the first try the twelve separate ten-digit telephone numbers of twelve strangers.  It is extremely clumsy for Sorini to be mainly referring us to dark energy in trying to discredit cosmic fine-tuning, because a deep dive into that topic will take you to what seems like one of the strongest examples of cosmic fine-tuning, one of the strongest reasons for thinking our universe is no accident. For more information on this topic, read my widely-read post " 'Vacuum Catastrophe' Should Be Called the Vacuum Miracle." 

The statement of Carr and Rees about the cosmological constant (equivalent to dark energy) is reiterated by another scientist who says this:

"What is particularly striking is how sensitive the possibility of life in our universe is to a small change in these constants. For example, if the constant that controls the way the electromagnetic field behaves in a vacuum is changed by four percent, then fusion in stars could not produce carbon....Change the cosmological constant in the 123rd decimal place and suddenly it's impossible to have a habitable galaxy." --  Marcus Du Sautoy, Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, "The Great Unknown," page 221.