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The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Advance Access originally published online on May 16, 2006
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2006 57(2):405-424; doi:10.1093/bjps/axl008
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© The Author (2006). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of British Society for the Philosophy of Science. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

God, Fine-Tuning, and the Problem of Old Evidence

Bradley Monton

Department of Philosophy, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0027, USA bmonton{at}uky.edu

The fundamental constants that are involved in the laws of physics which describe our universe are finely tuned for life, in the sense that if some of the constants had slightly different values life could not exist. Some people hold that this provides evidence for the existence of God. I will present a probabilistic version of this fine-tuning argument which is stronger than all other versions in the literature. Nevertheless, I will show that one can have reasonable opinions such that the fine-tuning argument doesn't lead to an increase in one's probability for the existence of God.

  1. The fine-tuning argument
  2. Objective versus subjective probability
  3. Observational selection effects
  4. The problem of old evidence
  5. Against the fine-tuning argument
  6. Many universes


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