Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

Further Reflections on Atheism 211
omnipotence, savours a bit of magic. God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there
was light. This cannot refer to word magic, as when a conjurer pretends that
the rabbit comes out of the hat by his saying ‘Abracadabra’. The notions of
theology are not easily made sense of. The theist’s view of God’s transcendence
makes this difficulty for theology unsurprising, but if the notions of
theology are of an object that is entirely beyond our understanding, then this
makes them useless for explanation.
Neil A. Manson has presented an interesting challenge to the proponents
of the fine-tuning argument in an article ‘There is no adequate definition of
“Fine-Tuning for Life”’. 22 Without attempting here to summarise or make a
proper critique of his article I shall make a few points which may be taken
as a present to the theist.
One may doubt whether a general definition has to be possible. The notion
to seems to me to be context-dependent. Thus one may agree with Manson’s
remark that there should be no astonishment in the fact that if Michael
Jordan’s height had been one part in 10 16 of a light year different he would
not have been the world’s greatest basketball player. As Manson concedes,
the statement has to be made in relation to the known background information,
the range of variation of human beings and in particular of basketball
players. Note also that it does not matter whether we say 10 −16 light years
shorter or one metre shorter. Nor in other cases whether we say ‘grams’ or
‘pounds’, or ‘feet’ or ‘metres’. ‘Slightly’ has to be elucidated in relation to pure
numbers, namely ratios, and of course the ratios are the same in either case. With
multiple fine tunings we would deal also with ratios of ratios. In parenthesis
I would like to add that the contextual and minimalist account of counterfactuals
would suffice for the present considerations.
More powerfully, I think, Manson points out that ‘slightly’ says nothing
about probability. Nevertheless in context it may. Thus in the usual
cosmological case the context is that of symmetry breaking. Consider the
analogy in classical mathematics of a needle vertically on its tip at a point O
which is the centre of a circle. Suppose that the other end of the needle falls
at a point Q on the circle and somehow detonates a bomb if OQ is within a
small angle to a radius OP. Surely in this classical case ‘slightly’ refers to the
ratio of this small angle to the angle 2π.
It is plausible enough here that the smallness of this ratio gives a measure
of improbability. Similarly it is not clear that the symmetry breaking of the
proto-laws just after the beginning of the big bang might not suggest a
probability metric.
If the range of possible cases were not finite, taking a case to be ‘within
a specifiable small angle’ as in the example of the needle, were given by an
infinite line, then all variations, large or small would have probability of zero.
Still, this could be taken as strengthening the theist’s case. Here I am concerned