Fine Tuning Robin Collins Summary

Robin Collins begins his essay with an analogy of a perfectly sustained biosphere on the surface of Mars as an example of a fine tuned situation and considers the probabilities of the biosphere’s origins. Fine tuning is how we describe a specific arrangement of observations where the final outcome appears more purposefully designed rather than existing by chance or accident. He explains that the likelihood of the sphere coming into existence by a series of natural unplanned processes is much less than the likelihood that some intelligent form designed and created it. Through a series of analogies and reductions, Collins demonstrates how our evidence of fine tuning in the universe is specifically “not improbable under theism [but] very improbable under the atheistic single-universe hypothesis” and continues to present objections and defend his position throughout.

In the case for our universe, the existence of fine tuning (our specific set of parameters that allow intelligent life to exist in the universe) seems more probable to be the result of intelligent intentional design consistent with theism as opposed to atheism which simply accepts fine tuning as in inexplicable inarguable fact. Collin’s lists various observations of the universe, such as the initial strength of the Big Bang, and explains that had this or any number or physical attributes of the universe been different, that life would be impossible. This is what leads one to believe or at least accept the possibility of the universe being designed intentionally with intelligent life in