In The Fallacy of Fine-tuning, Victor Stenger dismantles arguments that the laws of physics in our universe were ""fine-tuned" to foster life
If the force of gravity were a few per cent weaker, it would not squeeze and heat the centre of the sun enough to ignite the nuclear reactions that generate the sunlight necessary for life on Earth. But if it were a few per cent stronger, the temperature of the solar core would have been boosted so much the sun would have burned out in less than a billion years - not enough time for the evolution of complex life like us.
In recent years many such examples of how the laws of physics have been "fine-tuned" for us to be here have been reported. Some religious people claim these "cosmic coincidences" are evidence of a grand design by a Supreme Being. In The Fallacy of Fine-tuning, physicist Victor Stenger makes a devastating demolition of such arguments.
A general mistake made in search of fine-tuning, he points out, is to vary just one physical parameter while keeping all the others constant. Yet a "theory of everything" - which alas we do not yet have - is bound to reveal intimate links between physical parameters. A change in one may be compensated by a change in another, says Stenger.
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