Fine-tuning Argument and the Measure Challenge

With the dramatic advancement in physics and its sub-fields such as cosmology and quantum physics, teleological arguments for the existence of God, especially the fine-tuning argument came to the spotlight in theological discussions. Along with the widespread support for this argument, various challenges also have been raised against this argument by critics. The measure challenge seems to be of the most promising of these challenges. It calls into question the use of probability calculus in the argument and asserts that the axiom of ‘countable additivity’ has been violated in such probabilities and they are, hence, non-normalizable and illogical. Facing this challenge, two strategies are normally put forward by the proponents of the fine-tuning argument. The first strategy is to accept the challenge and try to circumvent it by normalizing the probabilities. The second strategy depicts non-normalizable probabilities as a usual phenomenon in various sciences such as cosmology and statistical mechanics and as such, considers it a rather justifiable anomaly in probabilities utilized in fine-tuning argument. In this article, in addition to reviewing the measure challenge as well as the two aforementioned strategies, we will discuss and defend a third strategy that has not been widely addressed by the proponents of fine-tuning argument. In this strategy, by raising ontological questions about the measure theory, we argue that the axiom of countable additivity is not a binding axiom and may be forsaken or be replaced by an alternative axiom, namely finite additivity.