A little over two years ago, I took
a pot-shot at Luke Barnes about his paper attacking Victor Stenger.
A little under a year ago, Victor Stenger had to the poor grace to die,
leaving no-one to defend his position.
Before he did so, however, I had the good fortune to correspond with him
briefly, at a very trivial level. There
was nothing earth shattering in what we exchanged, but he did say that he had “reason
to suspect that Barnes is operating from a covert position as an apologist” –
which aligns with my position in A Doctor a Day – A Response and my exchange with Barnes in the comments to
that article.
I was able to express to him my
concern, which I have raised elsewhere (obliquely in An Open Letter to Luke Barnes, for example, and more directly in A Doctor a Day), that the forces of apologetics are creeping into other areas of
science – no longer being content to make trouble in geology and biology. That is not to say that people such as
William Lane Craig have not, for years, been misusing science (and scientists)
to argue for god as the ultimate cause of the universe. What I have worried about is having people
dedicated to “proving” the existence of a god enter scientific fields with the express
purpose of producing “scientific literature” that is supportive of the god
hypothesis. This already happens with
the Discovery Institute, which is dedicated to supporting Intelligent
Design. What may be new is the arrival
of bright-eyed things ready to twist all sorts of physics so that it might be
used for the greater glory of their god.
I had identified Luke Barnes as a
possible example of this, with his defence of the type of fine-tuning used by apologists such as William Lane Craig. If Barnes is what I think he is, then he was
careful to present his argument without appearing to favour the “god did it”
conclusion and he has been reasonably careful since. I don’t think he went far enough, if he truly
wanted to be entirely non-partisan, and I conveyed as much to Barnes when I
wrote that “{his} paper was poorly written in that it gives the impression that
the fact that intelligent life evolved in this universe somehow implies that
the universe was finely tuned -deliberately and intentionally- in order for
that intelligent life to evolve. This miswording, if that is what it is, is
what the apologists latch onto, so {he} might want to address that rather than
leave it in the lap of philosophers (especially noting that there is
considerably more interest from apologists than philosophers)”.
He didn’t reply to this, but he had
earlier said “I'm only concerned with correctly presenting the science. If
certain philosophical conclusions follow, then that can be debated by those
philosophically inclined”.
Interestingly, and rather
disappointingly, this concern of mine appears to have manifested. Last year, my old nemesis William Lane Craig
wrote in “Is Faith in God Reasonable?: Debates in Philosophy, Science, and
Rhetoric” (edited by Corey Miller, who expresses a “desire to know God and to
make God known” and Paul Gould, a co-author of other books with William Lane
Craig):
Again, let's focus on Stenger's critique. Stenger's objections to the fine-tuning
argument have been the subject of devastating criticisms by astrophysicist Luke
Barnes and philosopher Robin Collins.
So, as predicted, we have an
apologist using Luke Barnes’ arguments.
Do we see Luke Barnes objecting to
this?
I would suggest not. My evidence in support of the notion that he
won’t object to such use of his work is that recently Luke has shared a podium
at the University of St. Thomas with … William Lane Craig.
Luke has presented at the
University of St. Thomas before, back in 2011, at the St. Thomas Summer Seminar in Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology at which
time he gave presentations on the topic The Fine-Tuning Argument alongside:
· Robin
Collins (a Christian proponent of fine-tuning as a teleological argument for
the existence of a god, just mentioned earlier in the same breath as Barnes)
· John Hawthorne
(a Christian philosopher who, according to the ex-apologist, was not
in favour the fine-tuning argument – although he has since changed his position
– Hawthorne was apparently a member of a cabal together the one of with
seminar’s organisers, Dean Zimmerman, and another “star” Christian philosopher,
Ted Sider), and
· Bradley
Monton (the self-declared atheist who defended Intelligent Design in a book and has
since been forced to resign his post at the University of Colorado due to an
inappropriate relationship with a student).
Note that there are videos of four
one hour lectures given by Luke on his Sydney Institute for Astronomy page (I found Barnes’ brief interaction with Robin Collins in the
second hour, as to whether the nature of water was going to be covered, to be rather
illuminating). I’d be quite interested
to watch/hear/read the content of John Hawthorne’s presentation, since his
point of view appears to have moved between March or June 2013 and June 2015. At the time, it could have been argued that
four speakers were engaged with a spectrum of views with regard to the fine
tuning argument: theist-pro (Collins); atheist-pro (Monton); theist-anti
(Hawthorne); and atheist-anti (Barnes).
Anyways, in July 2015 Luke was back
at the University of St. Thomas for another Summer Seminar (it was apparently lucrative gig in 2011, if the Society of
Christian Philosophers is to be believed, with participants being offered a
$2900 stipend above room and board, thanks to the generous support of the
Templeton Foundation – the Grand Pixie alone knows what the actual speakers got
– but this year that stipend is down to a disappointing $2000 above room and board, although that might be because their star
speaker may well have cost them a few arms and legs). This time Luke was appearing, discussing the
Fine Tuning Argument of course, with:
· William
Lane Craig (we all know who he is, don’t we?)
· David
Manley (seems to fly very low under the radar, the only hint of his allegiances
comes from the fact that he gave a presentation on fine-tuning at Calvin
College, which is dedicated to “Philosophy from a Christian Perspective”, but I
could not find any indication as to the content of that presentation – nor
could I find anything by him on fine-tuning)
· Neil Manson
(gave doctoral dissertation under the Christian Philosopher Peter van Inwagen
on why fine-tuning must be explained in which he claimed that “god did
it” is a tidy explanation, while an article of his I found on-line appears to be criticising
fine-tuning a careful read reveals that it vigorously attacks Multiple Universe
objections and only weakly supports a “fine-tuning is not improbable” objection
against “a Bayesian argument from small probabilities”)
The bottom line of all this is that
two years ago, when I told Luke Barnes that “(his) views ha(d) been co-opted by
apologists”, he wrote in response: “I’m only concerned with correctly
presenting the science. If certain philosophical conclusions follow, then that
can be debated by those philosophically inclined”. At that time, although I did not then know
it, he had already presented his version of the science at a
seminar for “Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology” at a Catholic
university … to philosophers (philosophers of religion no less). After listening to all four hours, my
impression is that this presentation was couched in terms of “this can’t all be
chance, hint, hint” – and he appears to be in cahoots with the philosopher
Robin Collins, the Christian proponent of fine-tuning for god. This seems strange, since Barnes was trying
to give us the impression that he had no interest in what theologically
inclined philosophers wanted to take from him.
(As indicated above, it’s still possible that he did it for the sweet,
sweet cash – but I wouldn’t like to imply that it’s definitely
the case that he sold himself so very, very cheaply.)
And now he’s gone and stood
shoulder to shoulder with William Lane Craig – a fact that he is in no way hiding. I find it increasingly difficult to credit
Luke’s claims that he is a disinterested party in this and that he is not an
apologetics-leaning theist who is using his scientific credentials to provide
succour to people like Craig. Especially
when there was less of that sweet cash available this year.