Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig, today, and excurses on natural theology.

Part 17.

For more resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonablefaith.org.

Today we are going to draw our discussion of the argument for a designer of the universe based on the

fine tuning of the universe to a close. And we'll probably finish early today unless there's a

considerable degree of discussion that you want to have on this material.

Now we saw last time that neither chance nor physical necessity provides a plausible explanation

of the remarkable fine-tuning of the universe for the existence of embodied conscious observers.

These explanations are highly improbable, highly implausible.

But we cannot infer immediately to design because sometimes it can be justified to believe in an improbable explanation.

You would be justified in believing in some improbable explanation

just in case there were no better explanation available of the phenomenon in question.

To borrow an example that David Manley used, imagine someone in a baseball game standing at

home plate with his bat and he hits the ball over the fence and hits a pigeon flying by.

Now that would be amazingly improbable.

And yet you would probably say that it was just by chance that he hit the pigeon.

Why is this chance explanation of this highly improbable event acceptable?

Well because there's no better explanation available in that case.

The idea that the batter aimed at the pigeon and designed to hit it by swinging the bat

so the ball would hit the pigeon is even more incredible and unbelievable.

You can't hit a pigeon with a baseball by swinging a bat and trying to hit it.

So in the case that there's no better explanation available, accepting the highly implausible explanation can be justified.

...