God or Multiverse? Swinburne on Fine-Tuning

We investigate Swinburne’s teleological argument for the existence of God, based on the fine-tuning phenomenon in cosmology. We argue that, for three reasons, the most important alternative naturalistic explanation, the so-called multiverse-hypothesis, is much more plausible than Swinburne wants us to believe: a) a multiverse generating mechanism, producing universes of various kinds, randomly differing in their basic features, is a priori quite probable according to Swinburne’s own criteria; b) unlike the designer hypothesis, the multiverse hypothesis does not hinge on the scientifically controversial claim that, given the natural constants of our universe, the emergence of life is almost inevitable; c) the fact that life is a very rare phenomenon in our universe and has entered its stage rather lately, is poorly explained by the hypothesis of a designer primarily interested in the creation of other free agents. Swinburne’s claim that God took a detour for aesthetic reasons is shown