With regards to the 'fine-tuning' argument, I'm surprised that theists and atheists alike consistently fail to notice the glaring contradiction in it. That is, that it, despite being an argument in favour of theism, presupposes a default, uncreated set of physical rules around which the universe has to be fine-tuned.
A major premise of theism is that only God exists in a non-contingent capacity, but if God must configure the physical laws and constants in a very, very specific manner in order to create a life-permitting universe, then there must be a pre-existing order that restricts what God is able to do. If an omnipotent God exists, then there can be no restriction on its ability to create a life-permitting universe. The laws and constants would not have to be configured in any way, let alone so incredibly precisely.
The whole argument is predicated on the idea that the laws and constants have to be exactly what they are and can't be different because, if they were, life couldn't exist. However, that completely contradicts the idea of an all-poweful God. If this premise of the fine-tuning argument is the case, then it follows necessarily that theism isn't.
The attempt to use God to explain design or 'teleology' is much like the attempt to use God to explain existence itself. That is, completely futile. God itself exists and God itself has various highly unlikely attributes (like omniscience and omnipotence) that can have no cause or explanation. Theism asserts that a super-intelligent, highly sophisticated, omnipotent and willed being, which can have no possible cause or explanation, simply is the default state of existence. Surely the theistic God himself must wonder why even he exists, rather than not?
By contrast, entities that come about by natural processes, like animals, do have an explanation, even if we don't fully understand it or can't fully comprehend it in our minds, given the timespans involved.
God is actually not a good, let alone the best, explanatory hypothesis. It requires the belief that blind and purposeless metaphysical forces have conspired to produce a being that is omnipotent, omniscient and faultless. By contrast, the position of the metaphysical naturalist is that, given the right circumstances and in rare instances, blind and purposeless forces can produce life, with all its faults. Even then, the natural order is clearly orderly and evolution by natural selection is not an entirely unguided process. This cannot be said of some supernatural metaphysical configuration.
I don't get it. If God does exist and we assume that he/she/it is all-powerful, why should we assume that he would create a universe one way or another? why should we assume that
he wouldn't create a universe that opperated according to a set of inticrate scientific laws that need to be finely balanced in order to support an evolving universe? I don't think we can make any assumption about what God would and wouldn't do (even if he is all-powerful) - as you seem to be doing in this post. In addition while
we may find the configuration of laws and constants so incredibly precise, it of course would be no big deal for an all-powerful God to configure it in this manner. You're right that an all-powerful God perhaps would not
need to create a Universe in this elegant and scientifically/mathematically balanced yet complex (at least complex to us) manner - but how can we proclaim that he wouldn't?? Maybe he just wanted to create a universe that evolved via elegant scientific laws and mathematical constants - these laws and constants appear mind-blowingy precise to us - but for an all-powerful creator it might just be a neat way of doing things.
Regarding the second part of you post I would also argue that it might be possible for a complex all-powerful God to exist without needing to be created (i.e. he may have existed forever). This might seem absurd using our own scientific logic but who's to say that the existence of God is limited to our science? Since we cannot proclaim that such a God, or anything outside this universe for that matter, is existing or evolving according to our own scientific logic (i.e. the science of this universe) then it doesn't make sense to say something outside of this universe must adhere to our logical way of thinking.
Topic: Debunk a theists argument thread, add yours below.