Certainty and the Fine-tuned Universe
One of the many paradoxes underlying our nihilist age, is our need for certainty in order to be able to believe, although this could also be seen, not as a paradoxical condition enveloped in nihilism, but rather as an end result of that same nihilism. The very fact that everything is relative makes us yearn for that which the relativity denies us, and that is certainty. When everything is equally meaningful and therefore meaningless, a need for authentic meaning (i.e., certainty) becomes vital. Belief itself is not enough to believe in things anymore.
Cosmological Fine Tuning [i] has taken us one step closer to believing in the unbelievable by opening the door of certainty to the question of the deterministic universe or, the purposeful cosmos. What Cosmological Fine Tuning (CFT) suggests is that the Universe is too specifically controlled to be purely accidental. And if it is not purely accidental then it has to have been programmed in some way – either by a God-like entity, or by the Universe itself.
But even if we affirm that ‘yes, the Universe has certainly been programmed,’ we cannot say with any certainty that it has been programmed by a God-like figure. We cannot move from programmed to programmer without leaping over self-programming, although those cosmologists who wanted to avoid the idea of any determinism whatsoever came up with the escape of the Infinite Multiverse that would bring even the finely tuned Universe back into the field of accidents, and, as such, return it to the framework of nihilistic reasonability again.
Science abhors determinism because it suspects that if it did prove that everything is derived from a blueprint (traditionally attributed to the handiwork of God), science would be thrown out of the window by the same design it had given certainty to. But how valid is this fear of determinism when applied to the case of Cosmological Fine Tuning?
One of the main reasons for the existence of determinist-phobia lies in the fact that a pre-planned cosmos implies the existence of destiny and, subsequently, a loss of free-will, for if the Universe is fine-tuned in order to make a certain, desirable future possible, then we cannot alter that fact. However, CFT does not imply that at all. What CFT suggests is that the Universe is ordered in such a way that has allowed conditions for life to be made possible. And if we consider the complexity of conditions needed to allow the existence of complex life-forms in our cosmos, we find that, even with CFT the experiment has been a very tenuous one, the success of which depends more on chance than on necessary results. So, while CFT implies a purposeful aim to the Universe through fine tuning, the accomplishment of that goal is, in the practical sense, shaky. It is certainly not destiny-unfolding and deterministic in an omnipotent God-like sense. In fact, it may very well be certain that complex life in the Universe is extremely rare (the Rare Earth hypothesis).
If things have been programmed to make life possible in the Universe then, yes, we know it has been successful, for our existence is proof of that success. But our certainty can only make that affirmation in a minimal way, and, in order for the life experiment that the Universe is fine-tuned for to work, the cosmos had to be made enormous in order for the minimal chances of success to bare fruition. And even that success itself hangs on a very fine thread over the yawning abyss of absolute failure.
Once the slim chances of success in this fine-tuned but still essentially chaotic Universe are calculated, then the image of the omnipotent creator and the destiny-filled blueprint of determinism is drastically diminished. The enormous fragility of creating and preserving complex life-forms only indicates one thing – CFT helps life by creating conditions in which it is made possible, but it gives no certain guarantee of it. Without CFT life would be impossible, but that does not mean that life has to emerge with it.
In other words, even with CFT, the accidental and co-incidental still plays a major role in reality. We still have free will. What CFT gives us, however, is a firm grip on reality. It tells us that the creation of complex life is a fundamental purpose for the Universe itself, and because of that it points toward what human purposiveness should be. It is an affirmation of humanistic anthropocentricism and gives us a purposive pointer toward what our positive role in the Universe could be. Firstly, to survive, because without complex life-forms in the cosmos the Universe has no purpose for its existence, and secondly to develop our civilisation in harmony with the necessities implied by the imperative of that survival.
Cosmological Fine Tuning provides a simple but profound reason for existence, which, in a metaphysically reasoned way, provides a basis that can make the certainty of existential convictions concrete. Its simple but profound idea lies in its affirmation that yes, a purposeful meaning to the Universe certainly exists. And it is from this simple thesis that we should develop our greater ethical beliefs that are so necessary now to lift us beyond this age of nihilism into a meaningful future perfectly tuned-in to the fine-tuned cosmos around us.
[i] Cosmological Fine Tuning, is a cosmological concept which implies that the Universe is deliberately fine-tuned in a way that makes the creation of life possible. We have discussed this idea and the humanistic purposefulness embodied in it in many of the articles posted on this site. Here are some links to a few more of our own many articles related to this theory:
Our Specialness | pauladkin (wordpress.com)
