The Anthropic Objection to the Teleological Argument

Author: TheMorningsStar

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The Anthropic Objection to the Teleological Argument is, basically, that it should be unsurprising that we find the conditions for life in the universe because such conditions are a prerequisite for us to ponder the question in the first place, that we are in a biased position towards detecting the conditions necessary for our existence and, when the bias is accounted for that the arguments for the Teleological Argument break down.

This, however, has been objected to by William Lane Craig with the following,
"You're dragged before a firing squad of a hundred trained marksmen with rifles aimed at your heart; you hear the command; you hear the roar of the guns; and you see that you're still alive, that they all missed [i.e., you see one hundred 'apparent coincidences']. You say: 'That's not surprising, because their missing is obviously required for me to be alive... The fact that you are making the observation is not surprising given that they missed. But the 'coincidence' of missing needs explanation!"

In essence, WLC argues that even though it is not surprising that the conditions are as they are, as it is needed to ponder the question, the fact that the conditions are as they are is still something significant that requires explanation, hence the Anthropic Objection does nothing to actually refute the Teleological Argument. Furthermore, even if chance is a possibility it would still be quite the absurd conclusion to draw based on the analogy.

And I agree that if WLC's analogy is to be applied to the universe that it does raise up some serious questions about the explanation.

However, a common rejection to WLC's analogy that I have seen is the case of a lottery ticket.
The odds of winning the lottery are extremely small, yet when someone wins the lottery and ponders why they are the ones that won said lottery it is not reasonable to conclude that there must be some explanation for it outside of chance. It is unreasonable to assume that it was designed for him to win said lottery, there is no need for further explanation.

And so we are left with which analogy should be applicable to the universe? Or is it even a good idea to use analogies when addressing the Anthropic Objection in the first place?
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@TheMorningsStar
Why does William Lane Craig always win on the point of the Kalam cosmology argument if the argument is so weak according to atheists?

An answer provided by Manuel Berger, Master Physics, Free University of Brussels, is :

I have never seen him win a debate, but he can dazzle gullible people. His tactic is to talk a lot, adding in a lot of irrelevant data, over-complexing everything, so that the logical fallacies somehow escape your attention.
Once you see the transcript of what he said, you can start scrapping everything that was irrelevant to his point and only clear logical fallacies remain.
The Kalam Cosmology Argument is build for gullible people. Every sentence here contains a logical fallacy and it builds on the ignorance of the audience.
People on this forum have already pointed out why each sentence is a joke on a pure logical level, but on top of that he takes a lot of liberty with physical concepts
  • When you say everything begins to exist or is created, you must realize that within our universe, on a physical level, things just get re-arranged. When you create a sculpture, you rearrange the basic material.
  • Causes are not entities: the cause of stars forming is gravity, not a creator.
  • When he talks about “everything that … ”, you have to realize that everything in the universe and the universe are 2 entirely different concepts.
  • When he says “The universe began to exist”, he is stating a hypothesis that is part of popular science news, but there is no consensus about that among phycisists
He does not use specific terms that would get shot immediately, he just makes the fuzzy errors that sound fine for people that do not care about physics.
If you make a more detailed story, you would lose the audience:
(disclaimer: just a scenario, prove it to be wrong)
  1. An uncaused piece of empty space-time existed.
  2. A Higgs field has to form immediately (we know that).
  3. The Higgs field cause the piece of space to inflate (we know that too)
  4. Because of conservation of energy, during inflation, the negative expansion energy has to be balanced by the formation of energy within this space, mainly particles. (basic application of energy conservation)
  5. These particles will clutter because of gravity and form stars.
  6. … the next steps are well observed by science.

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Okay, and what does ANY of this have to do with the Teleological Argument and the Anthropic Objection? I agree that the Kalam is weak, but that is irrelevant to the OP.
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@TheMorningsStar
The Kalam cosmology argument is a Teleological Argument and Manuel Berger's response is an Anthropic Objection.
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@FLRW
You are aware that the Teleological Argument is the argument from design, right? It is entirely different from the Kalam. In fact, I have never heard of someone conflating the two before. Do you actually know what is being discussed here?
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The cosmological and teleological arguments are two types of arguments for the existence of God. They are different from other types in that they are about the entire universe; the cosmological argument seeks to find a causal explanation of why some universe exists, and the teleological argument seeks to find an explanation of the designed or apparently designed nature of the universe. In this way they differ from the ontological and conceptual arguments, which are a priori, and from the arguments from mystical experience, moral conscience, and human consciousness. The cosmological and teleological arguments are about the empirical facts of the universe, the mystical, moral, and consciousness arguments are about empirical facts concerning humans, and the ontological and conceptualist arguments endeavor to deduce God's existence from a priori concepts alone, without needing any observational evidence about the universe.
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@FLRW
The cosmological and teleological arguments are two types of arguments for the existence of God.
Oh wow, what a brand new concept I would have never known before!
/s

the cosmological argument seeks to find a causal explanation of why some universe exists, and the teleological argument seeks to find an explanation of the designed or apparently designed nature of the universe.
Exactly, so earlier when you basically equated the two arguments as being the same thing you were wrong. Glad we agree.

Did you just look this up? Honestly, what you just posted is literally the basics of the basics and just shows that you did not know what you were talking about before.