I find this argument silly, honestly. Even if I grant that it's highly improbable that the universe as we know it came into existence through random processes, it's even more highly improbable that a being capable of creating the universe exists and decided to do so (for whatever reason). That being is by definition several orders of magnitude more complex than anything it would have created, so, using the logic of the argument against randomness, that being's existence is significantly less probable.
Unless of course you already assume that being exists and are just looking for rationalizations.
It also assumes that the universe as we know it isn't based on the circumstances in which it arose and exists but rather was created to exist in our current circumstances. The universe exists as a balance of the elements that make it up, and if one were to be dramatically changed it would rebalance itself. Life as we know it is the most relevant example: it has been very adaptive, and has changed over time as its circumstance has. To hear these neo-creationists tell it, life as we know it was created for the circumstance in which it exists currently, which is exactly backwards.
All of this is a roundabout way of saying I found your show on Sunday frustrating. I'm glad you did the show and are willing to host people like Mr. Collins, but ultimately none of his defenses rose significantly above the level of philosophical rationalizations of what he wants to be true. Ultimately I don't think he presented a single argument that didn't rely on the belief in god, which lowered the level of discourse for me (as someone who does not share that assumption).

In his Confessions, St. Augustine of Hippo posed a question: What was God doing before He created Heaven and Earth? Augustine's first answer, that God was preparing Hell for the people who delve into profundities, was obviously intended as a joke because Augustine then addressed the question seriously. Time, he proffered, was part of Creation; therefore, there was no "before."
Science too leaves us no better informed. In the Big Bang, our universe is said to have spewed out of nothing (call it a singularity, if you must). But what did it spew into? Certainly not into empty space for space came into being in the spewing out of our universe. It is just as easy to conceive a universe that is infinite in extent and eternal in time, as some eminent scientists still do.
Now, if God the Intelligent Designer exists, He is certainly more complicated than our universe and beyond our comprehension.

By definition God is that which created the universe.
The universe is that which contains everything except God ,which in order to creat the universe, must have existed before the universe.
We are part of the universe.
If we are part of the universe and God is not how can an examination by one part of the universe of the rest of the universe disclose the existance of God.
We can only know of God if we are informed of God's existance.
Hence religion.

I enjoy listening to believers try to build a reasoned proof for the existence of a god (or gods). Thank you, Robin, for sharing some of your ideas. I find the struggle for a reasoned explanation of why there must be a god, in and of itself, problematic. If there were a creator that wanted our worship it would have made its existence thoroughly (and unavoidably) clear, already. Seems to me that the best believers can do is, "it takes faith."

I enjoy reading the differing points of view that emerge from the topics raised on this blog. Mostly because Philoso?hy Talk remains 80% true to its primary goal: talking about all things philosophical. The 80% is my estimate---so, don't anyone get excited. Others have argued over the god issue and will, no doubt, continue to do so. The entire matter is only important, inasmuch as it affects the ways in which we interact with one another.
Expectations have such dramatic effects on who we are---or THINK we ought to be (your previous post on partisan politics illustrates this well.) I am a benign agnostic. God may exist, and if so, good for that. But, faith in anything begs affirmation. I think I'll have faith in myself. God can take care of its own affairs and those of the faithful---if that is how things really work. In accord with Bill, I have seen no data.

Aside from other problems like sample size pointed out above, I'm always struck by the failure of imagination that goes with fine-tuning arguments. Yes, it's true, having the Earth turn out just as it is, with precisely the values of the physical constants we have may be quite unlikely (although we certainly are not sure that those constants are in any way arbitrary rather than products of a deeper physical law). Our existence is just one outcome in the set of all possible forms of intelligent life, and we just don't know how big that set is or what it looks like. Further, when we think of the events leading to our own existence, we have to acknowledge that any long causal chain will contain lots of unlikely steps, whether it leads to an interesting outcome or not. A happy accident is just that, literally, and it shouldn't surprise us.
In biology, we used to say that all ecosystems *must* have access to sunlight as an energy source...until we discovered deep-sea thermal vents and chemosynthetic bacteria. Are we really arrogant enough to think that we have a grasp on all the possible ways life could evolve, to the point of estimating its likelihood? Again, estimating a probability (which is the essence of the fine-tuning argument) requires knowing how many of all possible outcomes satisfy the condition "contains intelligent life." My humble guess is that there's *lots* of ways to get some kind of integrated, intelligent life, even with bizarrely different laws of physics.

This planet of ours is not perfect and there are definitely areas on this earth filled with people that are desperate, hungry, and suffering. If a God existed, why would he or she create such an imperfect planet with so many so-called religious peoples fighting and killing each other over which religion is the most peaceful ... what a waste of energy. I say ... become a skeptic and question everything - instead of becoming like a "sheep" and blindly following so-called truths from a book called the Bible. I suggest picking up a copy of a book called "Caveman Logic" and turn on your thinking caps for a change. Another good read is "Parenting Beyond Belief"
Just my humble opinions here folks.

God is simply another name for the Universe and the Universe another name for One.
Be One,
=

I'm always baffled by these "inference to the best explanation" arguments for God. And it's always for the same reason: I never see what it is that they are supposed to buy you. I don't see anything new in the Fine Tuning Argument. Although, if you ask Laurence Krauss, the premise is no good to begin with, since (a) there isn't evidence of any special fine-tuning, (b) we have no good way of estimating the range of alternative life forms that might have existed given various alterations to some of the constants, and (c) no matter who or what came out at the end of a possibly very different cosmological process, they'd sit there just as we are, asking the same questions. [ re (c), consider: I might wonder how it could possibly have come about without divine plan that I, Steve Tighe, exist here today. Well, if any of the millions upon millions of different sperm produced by my father had met one of my mother's eggs, someone else, NOT Steve Tighe, would be sitting here (barring some tragedy earlier in their life). But, whoever that person was, SHE could surely ask the very same question, with the very same warrant. A random event, such at the particular day on which my parents conceived me, can have a unique outcome.] I'll also ignore the problem of how you get from "a creator" to anything approaching any being that might be recognizable as God. (As one of my undergrad philosophy teachers liked to say, "The universe does show evidence of design. It looks like it was, perhaps, the equivalent of an extra-terrestrial high school science project, for which the "creator" got a grade of "C+". Unfortunately, that creator, and her whole race, are now extinct.") Put aside these issues.
Let's focus on what the argument is supposed to buy us in terms of explanatory value, since that is the guise under which it's marketed. I start off with an agreed mystery about the universe: why does it have certain properties, why just those properties that are necessary for the (actual) course of life on Earth? And now I'm given enlightenment: There is a being, God, who created it to be just as it is, with just those properties. Am I happy (intellectually happy, of course. Surely there could be no other motive for offering or accepting this argument than a purely intellectual one)? Well, not yet. The agreed upon problem was explaining how the world came to have certain properties. And what is offered as a solution, to borrow from Spinoza, is to utter a name and claim that everything is thereby explained. HOW did God create the world? By what means? HOW does a being go about twiddling knobs and setting physical parameters? One old creationist answer, given by Henry Morris, went, roughly, "God created the world for purposes we can't understand using powers beyond our comprehension and forces nowhere operating in the universe today". Well, put that way, the argument collapses. One can't market something as "an explanation" which is essentially an eternal monument to inexplicability. So what more is needed? Well, I would think, some sort of idea of HOW the purported explanation is supposed to go. Eg., I believe that many living things begin from a single cell, when a sperm fertilizes an egg. In the human case, after 9 months, out pops a very complicated being, all sorts of structures, symmetries, and incredible resemblance to a miniature adult human, usually looking a lot like one of its parents. HOW does that come about? I take it the rough answer is, "that original single cell contained a complete genetic code, one half from the mother, one half from the father, which over the course of pregnancy guided development ..." etc, etc, etc. I'm not an embyologist, but I suppose one could give a real answer. Without something similar, the God Hypothesis seems to be in the situation of having 3 theoretical items, God, the act of creation (ie., setting the physical parameters, creating matter, etc.), and the universe, and providing no idea how they are supposed to go together.
Theists might draw analogies to modern science. For example, Quantum Theory is, according to those who know it best, darn near incomprehensible. Trying to explain its view of physical reality in terms amenable to commonsense is hopeless. So why shouldn't the God Hypothesis be the same? Well, (that is a long, drawn-out, half sighing, "well", by the way), yes. So if it could be shown how the God Hypothesis works to yield explanations of features of the universe as well as quantum theory yields explanations of higher level physical phenomena, theists might have a point. The problem, as should be evident, is that ANY outcome is compatible with the God Hypothesis. Creationists have always been in the (enviable?) position of knowing in advance of any evidence that their thesis is true, and therefore cheerfully able to claim apparently recalcitrant evidence as further support. (As the history of Christianity's rejection and subsequent embrace, at least by some, of evolution as part of God's plan shows.) As far as the universe goes, we don't know God's purposes, we don't know (theoretically) how anyone could set physical constants and endow matter with its fundamental properties, and we don't know what sort of powers and forces would be needed to bring it all about. And that is the crucial thing. If someone embraces an "explanation" that seems not to explain anything, while increasing the number of unexplained things to boot, I begin to suspect the main motive is something other than theoretical insight.
At the outset, I said that these sorts of arguments always baffle me. Now I can say why. Accepting a disputed premise, the fine-tuning of the universe seems to need explanation. So, we have one mystery. One problem. The God Hypothesis, far from resolving that problem, gives me at least 3: For what purpose)s) did God create the world as he did? What theoretical knowledge did God use to twiddle the knobs and set the physical features of universe? What powers are needed to do so? ("Twiddling knobs" is, of course, a metaphor. But I really have no idea, and despite reading and listening to a lot of stuff on modern physics, I have no idea what a non-metaphorical account of "setting the physical parameters of the universe" would look like, or if one is even possible.) I said "at least 3" because, of course, there is probably still going to be the problem of explaining how God exists. The old-fashioned Cosmological Argument, inferring God as the creator from the contingent existence or nature of the world, had the same problem. In place of one problem-the unexplained existence or nature of the world-we were given 2: the existence of God and the means by which God created the world. Barring answers to these, the initial problem still remained as well, ie., we would still not have an explanation for those problematic features of the world. I don't see where the Fine Tuning Argument has made any progress. It's still the same move, just in fancier dress. In the end, I'm reminded of Bertrand Russell's analogy of the pursuit of knowledge with climbing a mountain in the fog, with more and being revealed as the fog dissipates. I wonder if there aren't a lot of people who just like the fog.
PS Hi Ken!!!

The laws of physics, chemistry and logic are adequate for understanding the universe insofar as we can understand it. These laws are useless for trying to prove the existence of God, or His characteristics if He were to exist. Moral considerations do not limit our understanding of the processes that control the universe but they are crucial in trying to understand God.
In my much younger days, I set out to read the Bible from cover to cover. I got to a point where I could not conceive of a God of such callousness and cruelty as was represented therein. But the cruelty in religious traditions is nothing compared to the cruelty in nature. Consider, for example, that a few million years ago there were likely at least 8 species of hominids (and possibly as many as 16). Only one survived and became the progenitor of the human race. Why? It seems that as the head size and cranial capacity of the hominids increased, only one species was able to solve the problem of giving birth, and it did so by giving "premature" births -- at 9 months instead of the 21 that would be expected.
Cruel nature is credible; a cruel God, especially an infinitely cruel one, is not credible. Intelligent design, indeed?

It appears to me that God is a clever invention, having been posited across a wide spectrum of societies, cultures and traditions. The "God Delusion", as described by the redoubtable Richard Dawkins, remains a well-articulated and persuasive opinion, that seems to support a common hypnosis. In an angrier rant, the late Christopher Hitchens wrote that God is Not Great, while Salman Rushdie said that the title of Hitchens' work should have been: God is Not. I do not support any position in this endless and pointless argument, because it has achieved nothing, AFAIK. And, as I see it, none of us will ever KNOW; while we live to tell about it.

The Theist argument that the initial state of God is extremely simple is not refuted by Physics. The initial state of the Universe (at T=0) was also extremely simple. And Hot! At temperatures beyond what CERN can achieve. This state is also highly unstable (because it is also highly improbable). The Hot Big Bang Model of the Universe describes what results (the Universe today) from that improbablity. Mostly universal expansion and cooling trends. If God is the simplest state possible (infinitely simple?), then God must also be the hottest state possible (infinitely hot?). Hotter than the Universe at T=0. Since infinite states can't possibly exist (talk to a Mathemetician about this claim, preferably a Set Theorist), then God cannot possibly exist. End of Story.

The universe is not what you think it is; it is much more wonderful. I fell of a cliff while mountain climbing. My leg was broken in so many places that it was backwards, and I was going to die up there all alone. I prayed to God more deeply and totally that I had ever done in my life. After about 10 minutes I had an experience.
I saw everything around me to be of undescribable beauty, order and indestructable substance. I saw everything as God experiences it. I call it "experiencing heaven". The infinite unlimited is real. It is we who are stuck in 3 dimensions and experiencing limitations.
When I returned to ordinary consciousness my leg was perfectly, instantly and totally restored to normal. Perfect. There was never any swelling,soreness, stiffness,nor discoloration. Perfect. The experience with God only took a split second.
I am not a religious delusionary. This was real. I have had a few other experiences like this.
I cannot begin to figure out all the things you understand about the Big Band, black holes, etc. But I saw what mankind will learn when he figures it all out. I don't mean to sound arrogant, but as advanced as science it, science is still in kindergarten.
The created universe is the emanations of an infinite Source (God) Who is Spirit. The Source manifests substance. Man is given the ability to direct the energy. We also limit the possibilities and limit our own experience of a universe that really has infinite dimensions. It's hard to explain. I'm just a farmer.

I am surprised by how many posts here make highly controversial claims that are supposed to refute the fine-tuning argument without being aware that the claims are highly controversial or offering any argument for them. Most are confidently stated, with little support. In this post, I will address several of the objections raised by previous posts. I deal with most of these in articles I have written, many of which are posted on my personal website (search for Robin Collins). Here I will just give brief responses.
OBJECTION 1: God must be as complex as the Universe posted by Colin and Arvoasitis on March 18th
The first objection was raised by two posters. It is a common objection that is often promoted as a simple, fatal objection to the fine-tuning argument but is rarely argued for. The first post claimed ?That being [God] is by definition several orders of magnitude more complex than anything it would have created?; and the second claimed that ?if God the Intelligent Designer exists, He is certainly more complicated than our universe and beyond our comprehension.?
It is hard to see how the statement in the first post makes sense. A common definition of God is a being, or ground of being, that is all powerful, omniscient, perfectly good, and eternal, and that sustains everything in existence. How is it part of this definition that God is more complex than anything God could have created? That is certainly not stated in the definition I just gave. It is not like the case of unicorns, where it is part of the definition of a unicorn that it has a horn, or like the case bachelors, where part of the definition is that a bachelor is unmarried. The second post just asserts the claim without any argument backing it up, as though it is supposed to be obvious. So, neither author offered any reason for thinking God must be more complex than the universe.
Those who offer this objection would have to show that for any being to have the attributes that God has would require a high degree of underlying complexity. Consider consciousness (awareness). One might argue that from our experience with humans and other organisms, consciousness always is associated with a complex structure, namely the brain. This, however, does not give us much reason to think that consciousness NECESSARILY requires a complex, internal structure, since nothing in our CONCEPT of consciousness requires this ? and typically a connection of necessity is established by showing that the corresponding concepts must go together. If one thought that the property of being conscious was reducible to a certain complex set of interrelationships, then one would have a reason to think that of necessity it requires a complex structure to exist. No plausible analysis along these lines has yet been given, and many philosophers (both theists and atheists) have thought none can be given. In any case, it is clear that our concept of consciousness is not that of having a complex structure, since as children we knew we were conscious before we had much of an idea of what a complex structure is. So, I think it is plausible that an entity (or ground of being) could be conscious without having any internal structure, just as an electron has the property of having a negative electric charge without having any internal structure sustaining it.
The claim that God?s has unbounded awareness (i.e., God is omniscient) is also important for the claim that God has minimal internal complexity. If there were some truths God were ignorant of (but it was possible for a being to be aware of), then there would have to be some law or principle external to God, or something about God?s nature, that determined which truths God was aware of and which he/she was not aware of. That would add complexity to reality. So, I think a plausible case can be made that an unbounded consciousness need have no internal complexity. Similar things could be said about the other properties of God.
OBJECTION 2: Sample of One Objection posted by Bill on March 19
?By its very name, the universe is a single data point. No pattern, be it a line or curve, can be constructed or extrapolated from a single point.?
I never present the fine-tuning argument as a form of extrapolation. Rather, I present it as the confirmation of the God hypothesis by the existence of a fine-tuned, embodied-conscious-agent- permitting universe. Single data points in the poster?s sense CONFIRM hypotheses all the time. The existence of the cosmic microwave background radiation discovered in the 1960s was a single data point under the poster?s criterion since it is a feature of this universe, yet it strongly confirmed the big bang theory. Many other examples from science can be given. So, at least as the objection was stated, I do not see it as having much merit.
OBJECTION 3 Other Life Forms Objection posted by Duncan on March 20th
?Our existence is just one outcome in the set of all possible forms of intelligent life, and we just don't know how big that set is or what it looks like.?
The point of this objection is supposedly that we do not know enough about what kinds of intelligent life (or in my terminology, embodied conscious agents who can significantly affect each other through their choices) can exist to say whether it requires fine-tuning. This is just not true; all we have to know is that embodied conscious agents require stable, reproducible complexity. A universe in which the strong nuclear force that binds neutrons and protons together is too weak would have no atoms other than normal hydrogen. It should be obvious that highly complex entities that can significantly interact with each other cannot be made with just hydrogen ? whether in gas or liquid form ? let alone evolve; for example, we are not going to find intelligent life forms evolving in the sun?s atmosphere. As another example, if the dark energy density were not tuned to within 10^120 of its naturally occurring value (the Planck scale), then either the universe would expand so rapidly that the matter in the universe would never condense into galaxies or stars, or the universe would collapse long before it cooled sufficiently for galaxies and stars to form. In either case, stable reproducible complexity is not going to evolve ? e.g., without stars, there will not be any usable energy sources, such as the volcanic vents the author mentions. Matter would just be evenly distributed in space, such as one atom per cubic meter. I think people who raise this objection just have not carefully considered the fine-tuning evidence.
OBJECTION 4. Lack of Explanatory Value Objection posted by Steve on March 21st
Steve Tighe raised the objection that the God hypothesis does not buy us anything of explanatory value. Although often presented as an inference to the best explanation, I believe this is a bad way of presenting the argument (as I stated in my interview). One problem is that there are many different kinds of explanations, each with their own criteria for what constitutes a good explanation, with these largely depending on one?s pragmatic ends. A better way of framing the argument is either to claim that the fine-tuning data strongly confirms theism over its naturalistic contenders. The situation can be thought of as follows. Define ?elaborated theism? as the claim that God exists conjoined with claims that God does not require fine-tuning (for the type of reasons stated above) and that a universe with embodied conscious agents realizes goods that could not otherwise be realized. Before the fine-tuning evidence, many have found elaborated theism as not completely implausible, especially when compared with the contending hypothesis that the universe just happens to exist. Suppose that one is such a person. You might have doubts about the coherence of the God hypothesis (or the other two claims that are part of elaborated theism). The fine-tuning evidence will not itself give you insight into why you should find theism coherent, or make the other two conjuncts seem more plausible when considered alone. I claim, however, that it should make the naturalistic hypothesis much less plausible: not only is naturalists stuck with the inherent implausibility of claiming that the universe?s existence is a brute fact, but now they are stuck with the hugely coincidental fact that is set just right for the existence of embodied conscious agents. So, I claim, the inherent plausibility of naturalism has gone way down. Although the inherent plausibility of theism has not gone up, its plausibility IN RELATION to its major contender ? naturalism ? should significantly go up.

Further thoughts on Fine-Tuning.
I have to admit that I don't find the fine tuning argument all that convincing.  It seems to turn on a premises -- that the fact of a life-supporting universe is in some sense improbable,  given all the possible non-life supporting universes there could have been.   But I don't really know how to think about the probability or improbabilty of an overall universe.  I said as much during the episode.  That principle says that we should  reality - total reality -- to be in some sense plenitudinous. That is, we should antecedently expect that all possible ways that things "might be" will be actualized. That's not to say that the actual cannot  be a limited subset of the really possible. But when only a limited subset of the really possible is actualized, it seems that we want some explanation of the limited actualization of the possible. 
Not sure how big a deal that is. Wouldn't call it a hard constraint. Not sure it can be justified as any more than a human craving rather than anything like a deep metaphysical constraint.    Still,   although I'm not sure what to make of it, I'm not in general opposed to judicious use of something like such a principle.  And I do wonder whether  something like the principle of plenitude might work to generate something like the  fine-tuning argument.
Go back to something I said  on the show in passing, while building on a point made by John.   I suspect that throughout the universe there are countless number of life-supporting planets. And probably evolution has had millions upon millions of opportunities to work its magic. If so, the plenitude principle might reasonably lead you to expect that the total collection of life forms actually evolved on some planet or other is some very large subset of the really possible life forms. If there were some putatively really possible life form that evolved no where, one might begin to wonder whether that life form was really possible. It would be incredibly "surprising" -- to use a term favored by our guest, Robin Collins --  if evolution produced elsewhere just the distribution of life forms that it has produced here.  Then you probably would start to suspect that some sort of hidden hand, maybe even a divine one, was, as it were, loading the evolutionary dice. 
But how does any of this bear on the fine tuning argument? Well, I already confessed not to be moved by the argument, so maybe not at all.  But a couple of different points are worth making before we reach that conclusion.    First, if you think there is just one actual universe, but that all manner of universes with their diverse values for the fundamental constants, etc, are really and not just logically or conceptually possible, maybe you get to the starting point of the fine-tuning argument, but in a bit of a different way than its advocates suppose. This one actuality needs explanation. Not because it is "improbable?" Again,  who knows what the probabilities over universes are?   Physics, as it stands,  tells us NOTHING about that, by the way.   You get there, rather,  by the principle of plenitudinous actualization of the really possible.   Actuality seems so less plenitudinous than real possibility.  Of course, the principle might drive you into the arms of the multiverse because that gives you an actuality that has the same degree of plenitude as the really possible.     But you can also  -- it seems to me -- accept that idea that  random symmetry breaking at the beak bang does just as well (and probably better) at explaining the one universe and its special character than the the fine tuning hypothesis. Only if (fundamental) reality abhors randomness would you have to deny that. But why think that? 
Still, even if you reject both the multiverse and fine-tuning,and prefer random symmetry breaking,   maybe you still want to reduce the plenum of a possibilities so that there isn't such a great gap between the totality of possibilities and the totality of actualities. You might do this by trying to reduce the number of independent fundamental variables to the smallest number possible -- thus limiting the set of possibilities. Not sure how far you can get with that.  But it's worth a try, it would seem.  You might still have more real possibilities than actualities, but the gap wouldn't be so great.  
Plus it seems like the drive to reduce the number of independent fundamentals is  driven more by a methodological or regulative regulative constraint. Is there really any more antecedent reason to believe that the universe is "simple" (in the sense of having a few independent fundamentals) than that it is irreducibly "complex"
Not sure what to make of any of this. But that's what doing an episode on the fine-tuning argument will get you -- more questions than answers.

With all due respect, Mr Collins, you're being somewhat disingenuous. Your argument that the universe we live in is so complex it shows evidence of being "fine tuned" depends on the notion that complexity cannot happen through evolution and therefore must be the result of willful creation. The very meaning of your term of choice - "fine tune" - implies a conscious effort to refine something. Something simple cannot willfully create something complex - it needs to have an understanding of why what it's doing is the best choice. Water does not solve complex equations by finding it's own level, no matter how many times I give it the chance. It doesn't even know to try. In order to analyze and "fine tune", god would need to be more complex than the problems it's solving - it's a logical imperative.
That same logic (existence of a complex thing equals proof of a higher complexity creating that complex thing) falls apart when applied to your universe-creating god: The god that created this universe would have to be even more complex than the universe it created, as would the god that made him (because by your logic the only way something can achieve complexity is by being "fine tuned" by something more complex), and the same for the god that made that god, and pretty soon it's turtles all the way down. All knowing omnipotent tautological turtles.
That's my argument. I'm sure you've heard it before, and that you've given it some serious consideration. Your response (if I may paraphrase) is: Who says god has to be complex? It's an interesting hedge, and I'm glad that you're not trying to argue that the rules just don't apply to him - at least you're making an effort to adhere to logic. But then you lose me with your definition of god: "A common definition of God is a being, or ground of being, that is all powerful, omniscient, perfectly good, and eternal, and that sustains everything in existence."
Now, I'm not sure where that definition is from, or even that it is common, but for the sake of argument, let's just use that as our working definition.
I'll grant that if god were all of those things he could exist without being more complex than the universe. But if god is all of those things and only those things, what in that definition gave him the ability (or impetus) to create the universe? Nothing. What in that definition suggests that he willfully created specific things in the universe that were specifically adapted to their situation? Nothing. What in that definition establishes that god is simple, or even capable of willfully creating complex things without being more complex than the things he creates? Nothing.
Your definition is irrelevant to the question at hand and in no way establishes that something simple could willfully create something more complex than itself. Or whether god is or isn't highly complex.
So that definition is meaningless to this discussion.
Which brings us back to your question: Who says god has to be more complex than what he's created? The terms of your own logic. IF the proof of god's existence is the complexity of the universe (which couldn't exist without willful creation), THEN in order to willfully create the universe he must be more complex than all of the components of the universe combined. Because he's willfully, consciously "fine tuning" it. The fact that your argument is based on the existence of complexity but demands that the creator of such complexity isn't complex is logically incoherent. You can't have it both ways: either the complexity of the universe is proof of god's existence (and thereby proof of his higher level of complexity than the universe, the creation of which he was created for creating), or it's incidental.

All indications are that the observed universe has an underlying structure such that stochastic inputs ratchet evolutionary processes forward. Not only bio-evolution but also the other aspects of nature's machinery, from the formation of the chemical elements in stars and supernovae right through to the evolution of technology within the collective imagination of our species.
All of which exhibit strong directionality. A pervasive and persistent pattern which can usefully be extrapolated to predict the imminent emergence of a new, non-biological predominant cognitive entity on this planet from what is now the Internet.
Increasingly there is further recognition of the fact that stochastic inputs can (and do) drive the directionality of "life" processes in this way. An overall directionality clearly observable in the biological and other evolutionary processes which, from our traditional human perspective, we interpret as "purpose"
Jose Ignacio Pascual et al of Freie Universität Berlin have also helped fan the flame of this understanding by recently demonstrating that the stochastic motion of vibrating hydrogen molecules can be used to move a mechanical cantilever.
The interpretation of processes of this kind as a ratcheting mechanism happens to be my own preferred analogy. It does however require an underlying structure in the fabric of our universe evidence with which stochastic component interacts. And it is this which provides a rational basis for the contentious issue of fine tuning of the universe for "life"
The evidence for "fine tuning" is actually very strong. However, it in no way supports "Intelligent Design" or any other fictions arising from the superstitious myths of religions.
The physical parameters are but the tip of the iceberg. There is actually a much greater body of evidence to support fine tuning to be found in fields of science far better established than cosmology.
After all, perhaps the earliest proponent of fine-tuning was the biochemist Lawrence Henderson. In ?The Fitness of the Environment?, published in 1913, he observed that ??the whole evolutionary process, both cosmic and organic, is one, and the biologist may now rightly regard the universe in its very essence as biocentric?
Geology, biology and particularly chemistry provide many examples of ?just right? prevailing conditions that enable and, indeed, make virtually inevitable, the strong directionality we observe in evolutionary processes.
The most recent part of this evolutionary continuum is that most familiar to us and of which we have the best knowledge: The autonomous evolution of technology within the medium of the collective imagination of our species.
But the commonly held assumption that IF fine tuning is a valid phenomenon THEN it favors theism is flawed.
Because it predicated by the very common and entirely intuitive belief that it suggests a ?designer?.
But it can be very plausibly argued that, except in a very trivial sense, the concept of a ?designer? is but an anthropocentric conceit for which there is no empirical basis.
An objective examination of the history of science and technology bears this out.
To quickly put this counter-intuitive view into focus, would you not agree that the following statement has a sound basis?
We would have geometry without Euclid, calculus without Newton or Liebnitz, the camera without Johann Zahn, the cathode ray tube without JJ Thomson, relativity (and quantum mechanics) without Einstein, the digital computer without Turin, the Internet without Vinton Cerf.
The list can, of course, be extended indefinitely.
This broad evolutionary model , extending well beyond the field of biology, is outlined very informally in ?The Goldilocks Effect: What Has Serendipity Ever Done For Us?? which is a free download in e-book formats from the ?Unusual Perspectives? website.
My work in preparation "The Intricacy Generator: Pushing Chemistry Uphill" will provide a more formal and detailed treatment of this issue.

I'm certain that I'm misreading your reply, but it seems to me to boil down to, "If you're predisposed to accept the existence of God and his authorship of the Universe, the fine-tuning argument will appeal to you. If you're not, it won't.." Did I miss something? IF, and again ,this is, per Laurence Krauss, a disputed IF, IF I accept the claim that the universe appears fine-tuned for life, it seems there are 2 possibilities. Somehow in the conditions of the Big Bang, matter acquired these properties. They are somehow inherent in the structure of physical reality itself. It might be that physicists will never be able to figure out how that might have happened. So those properties of the universe will remain unexplained. The other possibility is that some outside agency acted somehow to produce the universe with just those properties. So, eg., matter could have had many other sets of properties. I admit this to be, quite possibly, merely an autobiographical peculiarity, but I really don't see what interest such an explanation would have, UNLESS we are also given the means by which God did, or could have done, whatever he did to set those properties (and for what reasons).
Given your comments on the different types of explanations, and my ignorance of what type of explanation God is supposed to be, I guess I have no idea how to assess the claim that the (disputed) fine-tuning of the universe confirms the God hypothesis. Because I have no idea what enters into confirmation. But let me try to get at the problem I have by giving what might seem a really bad analogy. Suppose I were to say: I know what causes schizophrenia. Jupiter. (the planet, not the ancient god.) Suppose you then ask me, "how does Jupiter explain schizophrenia?" and I reply, "It just does". You ask again, trying to figure out what I'm getting at, "But what possible connection could there by between the planet Jupiter and mental illness?" And I reply, "If you're prepared to accept the effects of heavenly bodies on our psychology, you might like this explanation. If you're not, you probably won't. But that's the explanation". I would expect to be taken as not serious, or as a bit nutty. But the problem is, I don't see where the God hypothesis is fundamentally any different, except for the historical fact that more people have been raised to be sympathetic to the God hypothesis. You point to a (disputed) puzzling feature of the universe. You offer an explanation. The explanation involves no filling in of the connection between explanans and explanandum. God's existence and ability to twiddle knobs and set physical constants ARE presented as brute facts, and the connection between God and the universe is left unintelligible. So, even given your reply, I ....probably could just have restated my first comment all over again. And I will repeat, I don't see why this isn't exactly what Spinoza meant by people who utter a name and think they've explained all.

Don't play into an argument that is not rational to begin with. There are no 'accidents'. That is opinionated. Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes if we don't know why, we say "god did it". This is a way of saying that we're not god, and that we don't know, yet not saying that "we don't know" as it doesn't inspire children with confidence, and it makes people want to know something which may not be worth finding out to begin with.

"All of this --- that is, a world with life, intelligence, beauty, humans, morality, etc., ---- couldn?t have come about by accident. It must be due to some intelligent, powerful Being --- and that?s what God is."
This argument has two parts, (a) that the world is a wonderful place with beauty and morality etc. and, (b) that people astonished from the beauty of the world would search for the creator of that awesomeness.
Well, (b) would not be so popular if it wasn?t for (a), don?t you think?
Let?s take a look at (a). There is not a world WITH life, life equals the world, and the world is life. We cannot define the world without life. Additionally, what we define as intelligence is our own logical and emotional function, perceived as the best way of using our natural capabilities, i.e. the brain and emotions. Who defined us humans as intelligent beings? We did. There is no other being to do so. We cannot communicate with other species to learn their opinion about us. And I?m very interested about what they have to say.
Morality is a term so flexible. It is strictly related to cultures, historical periods and nationalities. What is morality? Morality may be a way for societies to point out that people should respect the good in every man and every man should try to be the best aspect of him. But ?good? and ?best? are defined by society itself and cannot be accounted as God?s gifts to humanity. Ethics, that is the basis of morality, is a mixture of historical, political and economic factors that form the archetype of the moral man.
Nietzsche stated ?In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.? Einstein, I think, gave the right perspective of morality directing its definition towards society, ?Morality is of the highest importance - but for us, not for God.?
The idea of the intelligent human, the moral human, is a nice story, but I think if you look around, you will see that humans are neither intelligent, nor moral. Every society creates behavioral archetypes that incorporate logical and emotional patterns and direct people to produce more, being happy about it. That?s not a miracle.
Hence, there is not much to admire in the world. I don?t say people should not be happy to be alive, but life is not a matter of happiness rather than a matter of purpose. We live in this world, because we are created by it, for the purpose of contributing to its continuity. If we accept the realistic facts of our existence, outside the society at first and then in a society that could allow for the realization of our individuality as the purpose of the existence, then the world would not be about good and bad, but about the truth.
We admire the things we cannot yet explain with our tools (i.e. science). For humans, that have created such a great idea for themselves, it is very hard to accept randomness, and so the hope of God?s existence eliminates the fear of the unknown and gives all of us a way, through religion, to be like God. That is a fact that cannot be excluded from any argument about the existence of God. The religious man tries to resemble God, follows the guidelines in order to concur His greatness. Thus, have all the answers.
Our world has many contradictions. It would be more honest for us humans, to see the world and our societies as they are and then we may see ourselves as they are. The primary question of a human being should be ?what to do with myself?? not ?why I am so magnificent??! Then maybe, the world would be a wonderful place without the need to explain why.

For disembodied entities peering into an external universe, it is reasonable to ask, "Why this universe?" The answer "Because God created it" raises two questions: "Why does God exist?" and "Why did God choose this universe out of an infinite set of possibilities?" These two questions have a simple, well-known answer: "Because we created God in our image."
However, the current scientific consensus is that we are not souls outside the universe; we are part of it. If we are part of the universe, it is a tautology that our existence implies that the universe is exactly as it is. It is a tautology because it simply asserts that the existence of this universe implies the existence of this universe. A tautology does not need an explanation. Cosmologists call this tautology the anthropic principle.

Replies to Colin's and Steve's Replies
Colin and Steve, thanks for your replies to my reply. Here is the next iteration in which I reply to some of your replies.
First, to Colin?s post:
COLIN: ?Your argument that the universe we live in is so complex it shows evidence of being "fine tuned" depends on the notion that complexity cannot happen through evolution and therefore must be the result of willful creation.?
MY REPLY: The argument has nothing to do with evolution (if you evolution by natural selection), since that kind of evolution applies to biological complexity, and this argument has to do with the universe?s needing to have the right structure for evolution to even occur. The closest thing to an evolutionary account of the fine-tuning is the many universes hypothesis, which relies on the chance production of universes and observer selection instead of natural selection. I briefly addressed this hypothesis in the interview and more in my papers on the subject.
COLIN: ?The very meaning of your term of choice - "fine tune" - implies a conscious effort to refine something. Something simple cannot willfully create something complex - it needs to have an understanding of why what it's doing is the best choice.?
MY REPLY: If God is an unbounded consciousness, then God will be aware of and therefore understand all truths, which means that God will understand what is the best choice. As I stated in my post, I do not see why an unbounded consciousness would need to be complex at all. For example, there is nothing in the notion of ?consciousness? that requires complexity. As to your point about the meaning of fine-tuning, that is the name that has been commonly given to the fact that the initial conditions of the universe and the constants of physics must be precisely set for life to occur. At least according to almost all the major thinkers in theistic tradition, God wills the universe into existence; thus, no refining is involved. Now, you might object that having the power to will something into existence is unintelligible, but agents such as us do this all the time with thoughts and images in our minds ? I will to form an image in my mind of a red beach ball and the image occurs. So, initially such a power seems intelligible, though unless one is a philosophical idealist in the case of God, the power extends to bringing about more than just mental entities. Of course, in the case of God I cannot give a further account of how God can have this power (at least in terms of some underlying mechanism), other than just postulating that God does. However, one always runs into that issue, even in scientific explanations: at some point, one must just hypothesize that mass-energy has certain powers or obeys certain laws, without being able to give a further analysis. (See my response to Steve below).
COLIN: ?The god that created this universe would have to be even more complex than the universe it created, as would the god that made him (because by your logic the only way something can achieve complexity is by being "fine-tuned" by something more complex), and the same for the god that made that god, and pretty soon it's turtles all the way down.?
MY REPLY: I never said that the only way something can achieve complexity is by being fine-tuned by something more complex. Of course, if I said that, then I would fall into the problem you elaborate. I did not even say complexity needed a further explanation or cause. Rather, I only claim that the particular type of complexity of the universe was very, very surprising under naturalism but not under theism, and thus by the likelihood principle strongly confirms theism over naturalism. Or, another way of putting it is that the fine-tuning evidence has made naturalism considerably worse off in comparison to theism than it was before the fine-tuning evidence.
COLIN: ?what in that definition gave him the ability (or impetus) to create the universe??
MY RESPONSE: That is part of the definition of all powerful (omnipotence) ? which roughly means the ability to do anything that is not self-contradictory. You might reject this idea of omnipotence or say that it requires a high level of complexity, but nothing in the concept of the ?ability to act? requires a high degree of complexity.
COLIN: ?IF the proof of god's existence is the complexity of the universe . . .?
Response: Besides what I said above, argument is not a proof (only a claim that fine-tuning provides evidence for theism) and it is not based on the complexity of the universe. For example, a random configuration of letters is highly complex (just try to reproduce it), but no one would infer to design from finding such a random configuration. The argument is rather that the fundamental parameters of physics must fall into a very narrow range of values (compared to their theoretically possible ranges) in order for life to exist. Nothing in that statement refers to complexity. Given my statement of the argument, you would have to critique it by saying that something about God must also be precisely set for God to be able to create the universe. The objection would be a good one if one conceived of God as, for example, an alien with a brain. Then, since we know brains need to be set just right to function, so would God. That, however, is not how the leading thinkers in the theistic tradition have conceived of God.
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STEVE: ?I'm certain that I'm misreading your reply, but it seems to me to boil down to, ?If you're predisposed to accept the existence of God and his authorship of the Universe, the fine-tuning argument will appeal to you. If you're not, it won't..? Did I miss something??
MY RESPONSE: I think you did not state it quite correctly. The better statement is to substitute for ?if you?re predisposed to accept the existence of God? the phrase ?if you do not find the existence of God completely implausible?; the last phrase can be translated into the language of subjective or epistemi probability, as ? if you do not give God?s existence it an initial probability of zero.? If you give it a non-zero initial probability, then the fine-tuning evidence can confirm the hypothesis. What I use is the likelihood principle of confirmation theory: if the existence of a body of evidence (in this case a fine-tuned universe) is less surprising under one hypothesis (God) then under another (the naturalistic single universe hypothesis), then if confirms the one under which it is least surprising, with the confirmation being stronger the more the contrast in degree of surprise. (The degree of confirmation can be spelled out more precisely by deriving the likelihood principle from Bayes? theorem of the probability calculus, which I do in my papers on the subject.)
STEVE: ?but I really don't see what interest such an explanation would have, UNLESS we are also given the means by which God did, or could have done, whatever he did to set those properties (and for what reasons).?
MY RESPONSE: If one is using a personal agent conception of God (historically, there are other conceptions), the type of explanation being invoked is what Richard Swinburne calls a personal explanation, a kind we use all the time. If I want to explain why you drove to the store, I would invoke a reason (you wanted to get groceries) as my explanation. If you pressed me further on how a reason can bring about your body moving in the direction of the store, I would say that you are an agent ? that is, the kind of thing that has the power to act ? and that is motivated by reasons. Although perfectly acceptable in ordinary life, note that this sort of explanation does not address how you are able to respond to reasons or intend to do what you do, at least not in the sense of providing a mechanism. In the case of God, we can be given the reason (because of the value realized by the existence of conscious embodied agents), but not necessarily an analysis of how God has this power.
Even though we rely on these types of explanations all the time, you might find this explanation uninteresting in the case of God because it does not provide an account of how God (as an agent) can bring about anything or respond to reasons. But, if you do, it is because you are looking for a particular kind of explanation ? a scientific explanation ? that attempts to explain an occurrence in terms of underlying mechanisms and laws. An explanation that does not do this is usually considered scientifically uninteresting because it does not allow one to make further explanatory progress by uncovering the mechanisms or laws by which something operates. I agree that finding such underlying mechanisms or laws has been very helpful for scientific progress, and so if that kind of progress is what one is after, invoking God will likely not help. But note that is a certain type of pragmatic concern. If one is merely interested in the ultimate cause of a phenomenon ? the structure of the universe -- and is willing to take the ability of God to bring about the universe as a fundamental power that is not further analyzable, then one might very well be happy with this sort of explanation. Or if one only wants an explanation to take away the surprise of some feature occurring by invoking an hypothesis that was not just made up to explain the phenomenon in question, then the God hypothesis will also be an adequate explanation in the sense of removing the surprise that the universe has the structure it does.
As to the worry that one must accept God?s ability at this point as a power that is not further analyzable, that is the case with any explanation. For example, you can explain why water boils by appealing to the claim that water is composed of atoms and the laws regarding how atoms behave, and then attempt to explain the laws governing atoms by appeal to laws governing their components ? e.g., electrons -- and so forth. Eventually, however, unless you are willing to countenance an infinite regress of explanations, your explanation must stop and you must appeal to some brute powers or laws that you cannot further explain, but just say that is the way things are. At this bottom level, even in scientific explanations, you must just say that matter just behaves this way, without being able to provide any further connection between what is doing the explaining and the thing being explained. For example, suppose we cannot find any further account than that of general relativity of why masses attract each other. General relativity says masses attract each other because mass curves space-time, and in the absence of other forces, masses follow geodesics. If that was your ultimate explanation, you would just have to take the power of masses attracting each other as a brute given, without any further explanation. So, scientific explanations also have to accept brute powers (or at least laws) that are not further scientifically analyzable, but they just do it further down the chain. (As a side note, Newton?s theory of gravity was resisted by advocates of the mechanical philosophy for over 100 years because he did not give any account of how masses could attract each other, but just wrote down an equation for the relation between the force of attraction, the quantity of mass, and their distance apart. Eventually, scientists can to merely accept that at some point one must just invoke powers or laws without any further explanation for how the entity in question has those powers.)
All that being said, I further stress that I think casting the fine-tuning argument into an inference to the best explanation is a faulty way of proceeding, largely because one is comparing personal explanations with scientific explanations; this is like comparing apples and oranges, since if one is looking for a scientific explanation, one will never be satisfied with appealing to the powers of a personal agent. (Also, this holds in reverse. If I want to know why you went to the store, and you give me an explanation of the firing of neurons in your brain that explains the movement of your body towards the store, I would be unsatisfied: I would want to know the reason why you went to the store.) In the likelihood formulation, one avoids this whole problem of comparing explanations, As long as one allows that it might just be possible, though perhaps very unlikely, that such a being as God exists, I claim the fine-tuning evidence confirms that hypothesis.
Finally, I will address your interesting Jupiter case. I think it is relevantly disanalogous to the case of God, as you recognize it might be To make it analogous, at least three features would have to be added: (1) the occurrence of schizophrenia would have to be very, very surprising under the non-Jupiter hypothesis, but not surprising under the Jupiter hypothesis; (2) the Jupiter hypothesis would have had to have been seriously advocated before finding these that schizophrenia was very, very surprising ? say, because of purported religious experience with Jupiter and its powers; (3) one eliminated any other possible explanation other than chance. In that case, it seems to me that the occurrence of schizophrenia would confirm the Jupiter hypothesis. As another analogy, if a group claimed that there was a spirit called Groodle whose favorite number was 1346523423441765 and that the spirit was going to try bring about that the next sixteen die roles would come up with that number, and it came up on that number, I would take the Groodle hypothesis much more seriously even if I could not understand how a spirit could do such a thing. (This, of course, assumes I have eliminated any other plausible explanation, other than chance, the latter which I take to be the contrasting claim the case of the universe ? it simply came about by chance.)
Again, thanks for the taking the time to clarify your objections.

So much speculation. Much of it based on faith. Some of it grounded in physics. We seem to have all sorts of "arguments" regarding the God issue. Someone will surely set me straight here, because this blog and its commenters is/are adept at such. I have parsed the voluminous and, mostly eloquent, writings set forth in the previous comments. There is one approach or notion I heard of, many years ago, that my parsing has not unearthed in the current discussion. The age-old explanation of an all-knowing, all-powerful capital-G god was discussed, as would be expected. Michael, the true soul that he is, said that the Universe was another name for God. Simplicity is safe and comfortable for many of us who have other things to do in our lives. I admire and cherish those who live simple lives, trying each and every day to do so myself.
Anyway, the approach/notion I referred to is this: If an all-knowing, all-powerful (G)god has created this creation, of which we are a part, then, a) where did this God come from; b) why have we, as an intelligent (now) species, been chosen to reap the beneficence of this omnipotence, and, c) do we suppose that, as Michael suggests, this God, in fact does have all-powerful dominion over the universe?
Shirley, someone will set me straight. I am counting on it.
The Carpenter.

I have noticed from so many podcast, lectures and discussions involving highly-trained philosophers that their faith always supersedes their philosophical training and background when it come to talking about religion. Thus you end with apparently serious philosophical arguments hinging upon or being built upon mere assertions of little or no merit.
e.g. Robin Collins: "If you look at traditional theism, the creator first of all is thought to be necessarily existent and second, and this was long before the fine tuning, this was the plausible view, both in the West and in the East...
The creator is thought to be not only necessarily existent but have no internal complexity"
In what sense is making statements like this and then constructing a "Fine-tuning argument for God" based on such assertions "Doing Philosophy"?

The Creator:
The Sun, the stars, the planets, the Earth,
The space, the air, the water, and the dirt,
The plants, the animals, the mankind too,
The Universe, Nature, the infinite, the immeasurable,
The sacred, the holy, the God, the everything,
The truth, the just,
The you, the me,
The almighty, the One,
The All,
The is,
=

To Paul from Basel: Thanks for your comments. I wondered that myself, but did not frame the inquiry because I have offended before. My notion is that we ought not mix theosophy with philosophy, EVEN THOUGH they are, at most distant, first cousins. Seems to me that in these busy modern times, we occasionally eschew critical thinking. Or, we may simply lack the courage to challenge populist paradigms. Progress is inexorable, but never infallible. I still appreciate uncertainty---it keeps us humble. And, alert.

Reply to Paul from Basil on Doing Philosophy
Whenever one is discussing the merits or demerits of a hypothesis, one must get right what advocates of the hypothesis have considered to be part of the hypothesis. Then one can ask whether the hypothesis is confirmed by some body of data, or logically coherent, etc. I see nothing unphilosophical about reporting what theists have traditionally held as part of the God hypothesis, but just the reverse. That said, I can see how someone could misunderstand what I am doing if they did not listen carefully.
In this case, I am just reporting the kind of God the leading theologians and philosophers in the theistic tradition have believed in long before the fine-tuning evidence ?a God that does not have a great degree of complexity. To say that their God must be enormously complex and thus requires fine-tuning is just plain false, because by definition their God does not; the objection should rather be stated that the traditional conception of God is logically incoherent, since any being who created the universe would have to have an enormous complexity of the type that required fine-tuning. It is part of doing good philosophy to state arguments and objections as precisely as possible.
What difference does this distinction make? Among other things, it shows that postulating that God has little internal complexity that needs fine-tuning is not ad hoc in this context, since to be ad hoc requires that a hypothesis be made up to save a theory from refutation, which I pointed out in the interview. It also leads to a more precise framing of the fine-tuning argument. Although I said a few words about why God has been believed to have little internal complexity, in my view, no one has proved the traditional conception is logically coherent, and no one has proved that it isn?t. So, before the fine-tuning evidence, one is left with doubts about the coherence of the traditional conception of God versus doubts about the universe existing on its own without a further explanation, etc. To repeat what I stated before, I claim that the fine-tuning evidence does not introduce any new doubts about the inherent coherence or plausibility of the God hypothesis that has been traditionally held, but I argue that it does introduce new serious doubts about the plausibility of the naturalistic hypothesis that the universe just exists as a brute fact. So, given that one does not find theism initially completely implausible, its plausibility should increase for one relative to its naturalistic contender. What is unphilosophical about that line of reasoning?

If I were to attempt an argument in support of fine-tuning, it would go something like this:
Some things in our universe are allowed; other things are not allowed. For example, an acorn can become an oak but it cannot become a butterfly or poet.
Some things, although not strictly impossible, are so unlikely that we would have no need to pay them no heed. For example, inert gases were thought incapable of chemical reactions until the 1960s, when a university professor was able to make helium undergo a chemical reaction under conditions of extreme temperature and pressure. I have heard no more on that subject since those heady days.
Now here is an astonishing fact. Human life depends on a multitude of almost-impossible biochemical reactions (comparable to the inert gas reactions) occurring frequently, regularly and unfailingly in every human being while temperature and pressure remain nearly constant. How is this possible?
The answer is that that there are biochemical substances, called enzymes, which power the near-impossible reactions, sometimes trillions-fold, to make life possible. The question now is this: did these enzymes evolve naturally through a series of blind accidents? Or was there some sort of plan that brought them into being? Or were they the product of divine intervention? Or, is there yet another possible explanation?

The tight correspondence between the conditions of the universe and the structures and processes of life could be seen as either theistic fine-tuning of the universe for a very limited way that life could exist, or as evolutionary adaptation of life to the particular conditions in which it finds itself. My sense in reading the arguments of theists is that they really don't get how adaptable a replicating entity can be, whatever form it might take. We've never seen what a hydrogen-only universe with a weaker strong force looks like; who knows how life might evolve there?
I'll close with a nugget of wisdom from the deeply insightful Douglas Adams:
"This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in ? an interesting hole I find myself in ? fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'"

Wasn't that Addams with two d's? Several other thinkers respected the Hitchhikers' guy---and so, apparently, a writer of fiction corralled a number of truly smart people, while writing his own accounts of worlds beyond measure. Almost no one thinks about this. Most who did are, well, dead. Sure.