The Fine Tuning Argument

The Fine Tuning Argument

The fine turning argument (FTA) comes in a variety of forms, but it first starts with the alleged scientific observation that the physical universe is such that, if any of various constants (found in the equations of laws of physics, such as the gravitational constant) and quantities (such as the distribution of mass and energy in the universe) were altered even slightly while keeping the same physical laws constants (that is, the equations are the same apart perhaps from the constants they contain) the universe would not possess intelligent, interactive life (not just our type of life, but any kind of intelligent, interactive physical life). The question: how to explain the fact that our universe has intelligent, interactive life as opposed to not having it? A deductive form popularized by Christian philosopher William Lane Craig:

1. The fine tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
2. It is not due to necessity or chance.
3. Therefore, it is due to design.

Alternatively, it could just be said that design is the best explanation for the alleged fine tuning among the three alternatives.

Is Fine Tuning Real?

While there are some physicists who believe fine tuning is real, there are also some physicists who believe it is not, such as Sean Carrol and the late Victor Stenger. Maybe life in our universe is like water in a puddle; the water in a puddle flows to fit in to the shape of the hole. Similarly, evolution evolves life to fit in the universe. It’s not that the universe was fine tuned for life, but life, through evolution, fine-tuned itself for the universe. Similarly (so the objection goes), if the universe had different constants/quantities, other types of life could have come about, and fine tuning isn’t actually real. So one approach to this argument is to deny fine tuning, or say that nobody really knows whether it’s real.

On the other hand, physicist Paul Davies said, “There is now broad agreement among physicists and cosmologists that the Universe is in several respects ‘fine-tuned' for life.”[1] Atheist physicist David Deutsch accepts fine tuning and has said that the puddle analogy doesn’t hold water.[2] The person who wrote the book Just Six Numbers in 1999 that helped bolster fine tuning awareness was written by Sir Martin Rees, an atheist physicist. Fourteen years later, atheist physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow The Grand Design would likewise affirm the reality of fine tuning.[3] Maybe all these people are wrong, but I’d be awfully hesitant to accept that. Yes, we can find at least a few physicists who reject fine tuning, but the mere existence of dissenting scientists isn’t enough—after all, there also exist bona fide dissenting scientists who deny evolution (though this is a small minority among scientists) and there are even some climate scientists who think humans play little role in climate change (though again they are far from the majority).[4] What matters more is where the scientific consensus lies, and though I’m not certain, I think it is more likely than not that the consensus of physicists knowledgeable of the fine tuning controversy is that fine tuning is real, and that atheist physicists like Stephen Hawking are probably correct.

Attacking the Fine Tuning Argument: Physical Necessity

We don’t know of any physical necessity that forces the constants and quantities to be in the ranges that they are in. But does it follow that therefore there is no such physical necessity? I think not. William Lane Craig doesn’t give very good justification for discounting physical necessity as a viable explanation. So one possible explanation for fine tuning is some sort of unknown physical necessity. This is at least less extravagant than a hitherto unknown magical deity.

That said, one weakness of this view (whether it is a fatal weakness or not I’ll leave up to you) is that the argument could be modified to allow for metaphysical necessity and possibility. Suppose it is true that some physical necessity X forces e.g. the cosmological constant to be within a certain narrow life-permitting range; the theist could argue that this physical necessity X is itself fine-tuned so that it drives the universe into this narrow range. While X is physically necessary, it is (so one could argue) metaphysically possible for X to be slightly different so that it drives the universe into a life-prohibiting range (that is, the universe could have been different than what it is to have different physical necessities, including X). And so positing X merely pushes the fine tuning problem back a step, and we’re left with more or less the same argument that has yet to be refuted.

One could argue that maybe this unknown physical necessity X is also metaphysically necessary, but even if that’s possible (in the sense that we don’t know it’s false with absolute certainty) many people would find it unlikely and implausible. My own two cents: I’m hesitant to accept physical necessities as metaphysical necessities. It seems to me that one of the reasons we need science to discover physical necessities is that the physical world could have been different from what it is and thus we need empirical investigation to figure out what the physical world is really like. To say that all physical necessities are metaphysical necessities seems about as suspicious to me as saying it’s metaphysically necessary for a universe to eventually have a blog named Maverick Atheism. Still, I’ll understand if not everybody has the same modal intuitions (intuitions about what’s possible and necessary) as I do.

Attacking the Fine Tuning Argument: Chance

By far the biggest attack against the trichotomy of proposed possible explanation is the dismissal of the chance hypothesis via the multiverse. While there is not (as far as I know) any evidence that the multiverse actually exists, there have long been scientific hypothesis of a multiverse, some of them being predictions of certain scientific theories. So one viable explanation is that there are an infinite or nearly infinite number of these universes and among this universe ensemble the constants and quantities widely vary. And because the multiverse is so huge (infinite or nearly so) odds are at least one will be life permitting. This scientific hypothesis would explain why there is a universe that permits intelligent interactive life, and it has the benefit of being a scientific hypothesis as opposed to appealing to a magical deity. When I read about cosmic fine tuning, I’m given the impression that the multiverse explanation is the most popular way to avoid a designer among atheist physicists.

There is a bit of scientific pushback from theists on this having to due with the sci-fi sounding “Boltzmann brains.” First some background. The term “Boltzmann brain” is named after nineteenth century Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann. Quoting from Sean Carrol:

Boltzmann invoked the anthropic principle (although he didn't call it that) to explain why we wouldn't find ourselves in one of the very common equilibrium phases: In equilibrium, life cannot exist. Clearly, what we want to do is find the most common conditions within such a universe that are hospitable to life. Or, if we want to be more careful, perhaps we should look for conditions that are not only hospitable to life, but hospitable to the particular kind of intelligent and self-aware life that we like to think we are....

We can take this logic to its ultimate conclusion. If what we want is a single planet, we certainly don't need a hundred billion galaxies with a hundred billion stars each. And if what we want is a single person, we certainly don't need an entire planet. But if in fact what we want is a single intelligence, able to think about the world, we don't even need an entire person--we just need his or her brain.

So the reductio ad absurdum of this scenario is that the overwhelming majority of intelligences in this multiverse will be lonely, disembodied brains, who fluctuate gradually out of the surrounding chaos and then gradually dissolve back into it. Such sad creatures have been dubbed "Boltzmann brains" by Andreas Albrecht and Lorenzo Sorbo....

So the Christian apologist can claim that the multiverse explanation suffers from the invasion of the Boltzmann brains. Quoting William Lane Craig himself:

…if we were just a random member of a World Ensemble, then we ought to be observing a very different universe. Roger Penrose has calculated that the odds of our solar system’s forming instantaneously through the random collision of particles is incomprehensibly more probable that the universe’s being fine-tuned, as it is. So if we were a random member of a World Ensemble, we should be observing a patch of order no larger than our solar system in a sea of chaos. Worlds like that are simply incomprehensibly more plentiful in the World Ensemble than worlds like ours and so ought to be observed by us if we were but a random member of such an ensemble.

Here’s where the Boltzmann Brains come into the picture. In order to be observable the patch of order needn’t be even as large as the solar system. The most probable observable world would be one in which a single brain fluctuates into existence out of the quantum vacuum and observes its otherwise empty world. The idea isn’t that the brain is the whole universe, but just a patch of order in the midst of disorder. Don’t worry that the brain couldn’t persist long: it just has to exist long enough to have an observation, and the improbability of the quantum fluctuations necessary for it to exist that long will be trivial in comparison to the improbability of fine tuning.

While the Boltzmann brain rests on a scientific claim the objection is largely philosophical. Suppose it is true that the majority of minds are Boltzmann brains. So what? It is also true that the majority of minds that have ever lived were present in the same American state that I am in this decade. Should I therefore conclude that “design” is the best explanation for why I have been present in the American state in this decade, rather than chance? It would appear not. Or suppose I win the lottery; the odds that I would have this particular winning ticket is very improbable, but should I conclude design over chance? Certainly not. So one point of contention here is whether this Boltzmann brain business provides a genuine reason to reject the chance hypothesis. Why should we accept design over the “we won the cosmic brain lottery” hypothesis”?

Still, one of the lessons of Bayesian mathematics is this: given some hypothesis H and evidence E, the lower that P(E|H) is (i.e. the lower likelihood we’d see evidence E given some hypothesis H), the more E provides evidence against H. If it is very unlikely that we’d see intelligent interactive life given the chance hypothesis, and we do see intelligent interactive life, doesn’t this provide at least some degree of evidence against the chance hypothesis? Maybe, but how much could be disputed. After all, it is also very unlikely that I’d see myself winning if it wasn’t rigged for me to win it (in the absence of it being rigged, the odds of my winning the lottery are heavily against me). Yet if I won the lottery, I still would not have sufficient grounds to conclude it has been rigged for me to win. I’d need something more to conclude design over chance here. The apologist, it could be argued, likewise needs something more to reject the cosmic brain lottery explanation.

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1. Int. J. of Astrobiology 2(2): 115, (2003). ↩
2. “The Anthropic Universe” 2006-02-18. Retrieved 2015-02-28. ↩
3. Hawking, Stephen; Mlodinow, Loendard. The Grand Design (New York: Random House, Inc., 2010), pp. 143-144, 157-162. ↩
4. Evolution, Climate Change and Other Issues PewResearch. 2009-07-09. Retrieved 2015-02-28. Scientific and Public Perspectives on Climate Change, Yale University. 2013-06-03. Retrieved 2015-02-28. ↩

Bad Pop Science

Like many people who argue for atheism and think independently, I love science. When I went to a science fiction convention last year, on one day I attended almost nothing but panels about science itself. One of the things that was brought up was bad science being reported to the press. They mentioned that professional science writers who have bona fide scientific training have largely gone by the wayside as newspapers and other news media outlets cut budgets.

You might have seen some online yourself, where reporters, perhaps due to scientific incompetence, unintentionally or otherwise exaggerate real scientific accomplishments into headlines that grab your attention (probably not coincidentally, sucking in readers to read the article means more eyeballs on advertisements, which means more profits for those who host the articles). Epidemiologist and science writer Ben Goldacre write about

…the media obsession with "new breakthroughs": a more subtly destructive category of science story. It's quite understandable that newspapers should feel it's their job to write about new stuff. But in the aggregate, these stories sell the idea that science, and indeed the whole empirical world view, is only about tenuous, new, hotly-contested data. Articles about robustly-supported emerging themes and ideas would be more stimulating, of course, than most single experimental results, and these themes are, most people would agree, the real developments in science. But they emerge over months and several bits of evidence, not single rejiggable press releases. Often, a front page science story will emerge from a press release alone, and the formal academic paper may never appear, or appear much later, and then not even show what the press reports claimed it would

This was written back in 2005, but what he said holds true years later. Here’s an example of one of the things that was brought up by an audience member in the panel, an article written in 2010 titled Freaky Physics Proves Parallel Universes Exist. Seldom (if ever!) have I seen such an attention grabbing headline for a science article (I can almost hear the cha-ching resulting from the numerous people who clicked to read the article), but was there freaky physics that proved parallel universes exist? No, not even close. From a Science Blogs article titled The Worst Physics Article Ever:

Every word in the title is wrong but “physics”. It’s not freaky, doesn’t prove anything we didn’t already know, and has nothing to do with parallel universes nor does it shed any light the question of their possible existence.

Science Blogs, incidentally, is a good place for real science news because it’s an invitation only group that’s written by bona fide scientists, not scientifically illiterate journalists.

Another example I’ve seen posted by some folks online is an article titled, “Cambridge Study Reveals How Life Could Have Started From Nothing.” The title reminds me of the time that David Z. Albert (author of Quantum Mechanics and Experience, a book I read to happily learn more about the concepts of quantum mechanics) criticized his fellow physicist Lawrence Krauss on his use of “nothing”(and other philosophical missteps) in the book A Universe from Nothing in the New York Times. The afterward of Krauss’s book, authored by Richard Dawkins, says, “Even the last remaining trump card of the theologian, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?,’ shrivels up before your eyes as you read these pages.” But as Albert explained, the book fails completely in doing this. (I have already put forward a better way to rebut the Leibnizian cosmological argument). In Krauss’s defense, he has a doctorate in physics but not philosophy (whereas Albert has doctorates in both) and Krauss at least made it clear what he meant by “nothing.” Krauss can be forgiven for not being as philosophically literate as Albert, but at least Krauss was scientifically literate. The author of this article doesn’t show literacy in either field in claiming that the scientific discovery he refers to shows that life could come from nothing.

I might be nitpicking about “nothing,” but the author of the article does say, “Rasler's team has been the first to show that life could literally come from nothing.” If nothing else, don’t use misuse the word “literally.” Such misuse drives me figuratively insane.

From the article:

One of the most challenging questions in basic biology and the history of evolution and life stems from the unknown origin of the first cells billions of years ago. Though many pieces of the puzzle have been put together, this origin story remains somewhat murky. But a team of researchers from the University of Cambridge believe they've accidentally stumbled on an answer, and a very compelling one at that.

The mistakes of this article aren’t as serious as the “Freaky Physics Proves Parallel Universes Exist” but apparently the article has misled a number of people on the internet into thinking the discovery is a lot bigger than it is.

When you see fantastic claims like “[Someone or some team] has been the first to show that life could literally come from nothing,” it’s often a good idea to check the original scientific paper if you can (at least its abstract). It won’t necessarily always be comprehensible to a layperson (even a scientifically literate one), but this time we’re fortunate. From first few sentences of the abstract, with some key parts bolded:

The reaction sequences of central metabolism, glycolysis and the pentose phosphate pathway provide essential precursors for nucleic acids, amino acids and lipids. However, their evolutionary origins are not yet understood. Here, we provide evidence that their structure could have been fundamentally shaped by the general chemical environments in earth's earliest oceans.

I’m not going to say this isn’t progress, but notice what was accomplished here is a lot more modest then the impression made in the pop science article—or at least portions of it. The article does add the caveat that this discovery is “one that is still only a part of an overall picture that's still forming through years of continuing research,” but that’s still no reason to use a misleading headline and inaccurately describe the science as “Rasler's team has been the first to show that life could literally come from nothing.” The actual accomplishment of Rasler’s team wasn’t anything close to that.

There are numerous other examples I could give, but I think something more useful would be looking at this TED talk by Ben Goldacre about battling bad science. Not only does he have a charming British accent, he also has useful stuff to say. One of the things he does is what I did in my “life from nothing” example: he looked up the actual paper.

He also talks about pharmaceutical industries withholding scientific studies, but fortunately that situation seems to be improving somewhat.

Conjunction of Contingent Facts

One variety of the Leibnizian cosmological argument (LCA) is one in which the principle of sufficient reason (PSR) is “every fact has an explanation for why it is true.” A fact being contingent means it could have been false. An example of a contingent fact is “Abraham Lincoln was the President of the United States.” An example of a non-contingent fact is “two plus two equal four.” Behold the following argument for theism:

1. There is an sufficient reason (and thus an explanation) for every contingent fact (PSR).
2. The conjunction of all contingent facts (fact #1 is true and fact #2 is true and...) is itself a fact; call this CCF.
3. CCF is a contingent fact (surely a different conjunction is possible, since each fact is contingent).
4. CCF has an explanation (follows from 1 and 3).
5. If CCF has an explanation, that explanation is a necessary entity (it cannot be another contingent thing since that would be part of CCF, the very thing we are trying to explain, and contingent facts cannot themselves contain the reason for why they are true).
6. Therefore, there exists a necessary entity that is the explanation for CCF (follows from 4 and 5).

One of God’s classical attributes is necessary existence, i.e. that he is a being that exists in all possible worlds. And so, the final line, if true, would constitute at least some evidence for theism. Some versions of the LCA have a less modest conclusion, saying something like “Therefore, God exists” but here I’ll address the harder-to-attack version since if line (6) is true and justified by this argument, it would indeed constitute some evidence for theism and atheism is better off showing that line (6) is not justified here.

There is a reason to believe that premise (1) is false, but first, let me praise it a little bit. It is admirable to search for explanations for why some contingent fact is true; science looks for such explanations all the time. The trouble is when we take an idea that’s good in general but then take it to an extreme. The PSR in premise (1) is just such an example.

Suppose it’s true that the CCF has a sufficient reason for why it is that way and not otherwise. If so, that reason would itself have to be some sort of necessary fact; if it were a contingent fact it would be part of CCF, which is what is to be explained, and contingent facts cannot themselves contain the reason for why they are true (note the similar reasoning for this and line 5). But whatever is entailed by a necessary truth is itself necessary, which would make CCF a necessary truth, which of course conflicts with premise (3). So this version of the LCA is not a sound argument. If I had to pick a false premise, I’d say (1) is very likely false.

No One Lives Forever

On this Halloween night I'm reminded of an Oingo Boingo song (for those who don't know, the singer is Danny Elfman!). Here's a clip from their farewell concert:

Why do I show this? One, it is Halloween and the song is somewhat macabre (though not as much as some of their other songs). Two, it kind of addresses a point about life supposedly being meaningless and grim on an atheistic no-afterlife worldview. Some of the lyrics are as follows:

No one beats him at his game
For very long, but just the same
Who cares; there's no place safe to hide
Nowhere to run—no time to cry
So celebrate while you still can
'Cause any second, it may end
And when it's all been said and done
Better that you had some fun
Instead of hiding in a shell
Why make your life a living hell?
So have a toast and down the cup
And drink to bones that turn to dust 'cause
No one, no one, no one, no one, no one, no one, no one, no one, no one, no one, no one, no one
No one lives forever!

Even if there is no afterlife, what he says here is quite true: better that you have some fun, why make your life a living hell? No need to be grim and sad; enjoy life while you can!

Criterion of Embarrassment

Last month I mentioned the “criterion of embarrassment” and how it might not apply so well with the female discoverers of the tomb. The criterion of embarrassment is a bona fide earmark of truth used by historians, but it can also backfire on Christian apologists. I have only one example to give in this article, but it’s a big one: Matthew 27:46 (NIV):

About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).

I’ll agree with the Christian who thinks that the criterion of embarrassment brings significant verisimilitude points here, but it also poses a problem for those who believe Jesus is the incarnation of God. Jesus, being an incarnation of God, would be omniscient and thus would know that this what’s being uttered here isn’t quite true. Moreover, this phrase is far more likely to be uttered if atheism is true and Jesus was not the Son of God, but rather some poor deluded soul. So while I think it’s more likely than not that Jesus uttered this phrase, this would seem to be evidence against Christianity.

Women Visiting Jesus’ Tomb

A number of Christian apologists claim that the women discovering the empty tomb of Jesus brings points in favor of the empty tomb because of the so-called criterion of embarrassment, with women (who were admittedly of a lower social status) being the first witnesses of it. But a person making up this story (not saying it was made up; maybe it was merely legendary) might have included the women just to be realistic. From the Women in the Bible website:

Tombs were visited and watched for three days by family members. On the third day after death, the body was examined. This was to make sure that the person was really dead, for accidental burial of someone still living could occur. On these occasions, the body would be treated by the women of the family with oils and perfumes. The women's visit to the tombs of Jesus and Lazarus are connected with this ritual.

A person knowing this likely would have had the women be the first discoverers of Jesus’ empty tomb.

More Plausible Than Their Denials

Introduction

William Lane Craig has long been a fan of the “more plausible than its denial” approach with premises in pro-theism arguments. In addition to being formally valid (the conclusion logically and inescapably following from the premises), having true premises, being informally valid (making no informal fallacies, like begging the question) Craig seems to think adding “the premises are more plausible than their negations” to this list is enough to make a good argument. Craig’s position on this is problematic however.

The Problem

Take for example this Q & A article. As one might expect, Craig says that among the criteria for a good argument are the argument being deductively valid (the conclusion follows logically and inescapably from the premises) and true premises. (In logic, a deductively valid argument with true premises is called a sound argument.) Craig however also says this:

I’ve argued that what is needed is that the premisses be not only true but more plausible than their opposites or negations. If it is more plausible that a premiss is, in light of the evidence, true rather than false, then we should believe the premiss.

Should we? Consider this hypothetical scenario. I am very sick, and there is a potion that has a 51% chance of curing me if I drink it, but also has a 49% chance of killing me if I drink it. If I don’t take the potion, I will recover in a few days, albeit it will be a rather unpleasant few days, akin to having the flu. Now, if I knew the potion would cure me, the rational thing for me would be to take it. And yet, the rational thing for me to do is to not accept “This potion will cure me” as something I know to be true. We have a claim that is more plausible than its negation, but I’m pretty sure the uncertainty level is great enough that I should withhold my belief in it. So this argument isn’t a good one even though each premise is more plausible than its negation:

1. If drinking the potion would cure me, then I should drink it.
2. Drinking the potion would cure me.
3. Therefore, I should drink it.

Individually each premise is more plausible than its negation, and yet the conclusion isn’t quite true.

Or to use a less dramatic example to illustrate the point, suppose a random number generator has displayed an integer 1 through 20, but I haven’t yet looked at the screen yet to know which number it picked. The claim, “It picked a number less than 12” is more plausible than its negation; it has a 55% of being true, but I don’t really know it to be true until I look at the screen. I would be quite rational in withholding my belief about whether “It picked a number less than 12” is in fact true.

Suppose our random number generator has three trials, with each event being probabilistically independent of the other. Now consider the following deductive argument:

4. The first trial picked a number less than 13.
5. The second trial picked a number less than 13.
6. The third trial picked a number less than 13.
7. Therefore, the first, second, and third trials each picked a number less than 13.

Each premise has a 60% chance of being true, and thus each premise is more plausible than its denial. And yet, the probability that we have a sound argument is only 21.6%, and the probability that the conclusion is false is 78.4%. Yet if we were to follow Craig’s logic, we should believe all three premises (since each is more plausible than its negation), and as a consequent we should believe the conclusion (on pain of inconsistency, since the conclusion follows from the premises) even though we know the conclusion has a 78.4% chance of being false!

Craig seems kind of aware of this problem in the Q & A article I linked to, but he never seems to quite address it. Craig does say, “It’s logically fallacious to multiply the probabilities of the premisses to try to calculate the probability of the conclusion.” But whether that is true will depend on the circumstances. In the case of the random number generator argument, multiplying the probability of the premises to calculate the probability of the conclusion works just fine. Here’s an example where it doesn’t work, where I roll a fair six-sided die but didn’t see the die come up:

8. The six-sided fair die I rolled is four or less.
9. The six-sided fair die I rolled is five or less.
10. Therefore, the six-sided die I rolled is (a) four or less; and (b) five or less.

Multiplying the probabilities gives us about 55.6% probability for the conclusion, when the conclusion’s probability is closer to 66.7%. The reason multiplying probabilities doesn’t work here is that the premises aren’t probabilistically independent of each other.

Still, the random number generator argument I gave (lines 4 through 7 above) still provides an apparent counterexample to Craig’s claim regarding what makes a good argument, because here we have an argument that meets Craig’s criteria and yet we know the argument is probably unsound. We also have reason to doubt Craig’s claim that, “If it is more plausible that a premiss is, in light of the evidence, true rather than false, then we should believe the premiss” due to the argument in lines 1 through 3 above.

A Caveat

I don’t want to go too far and assert that “Each premise is more plausible than its negation” is a worthless criterion. Often times if a deductively valid argument were to meet that criterion, the argument would provide at least some degree of rational support for the conclusion. To illustrate, suppose we knew that each premise of the following argument is more plausible than its denial:

11. If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.
12. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
13. Therefore, God exists.

The fact (if it were so) that each premise is more plausible than its denial would make the atheist intellectually uncomfortable, because each premise being more plausible than its denial means that the argument provides at least some support for the conclusion, and it would just be a question of how much support that argument provides. (For those interested in seeing me argue that it is not the case that each premise is more plausible than its negation, see my article The Moral Argument and William Lane Craig.)

Consider again the case of the random number generator: the argument in lines 4-7. There the argument’s premises are (individually) more plausible than their denial such that we at least know the probability of the conclusion is not less than 21.6%. So each premise being more plausible than its denial lends some support for the conclusion—21.6% is better than 0% after all—it’s just that the degree of rational support is not enough to make the conclusion’s probability more than 50%.

And I think this sort of thing is an often overlooked weakness in pro-theism arguments. It’s possible for a pro-theism argument to provide some but only a little support for the conclusion. Indeed, that was the approach I took when rebutting the Leibnizian cosmological argument where I said this (albeit after bestowing a number of objections to the argument):

One way an argument can fail to be convincing is if it provides no rational support for its conclusion, but we should not make the mistake of thinking that’s the only way an argument can fail to be convincing. Another way is if the argument provided nonzero but nonetheless too little support for its conclusion. So we can accept that ceteris paribus a worldview that explains e.g. why there is something rather than nothing is better than one that doesn’t, but given the plausibility of physical reality existing eternally without an external cause, the degree of evidential support this provides is rather small.

And if the probability of God’s existence is much less than 50% (due to say the argument from evil), the Leibnizian cosmological argument would do very little to remedy that problem for theism.