Does Fine-Tuning Need an Explanation?

Abstract

Contemporary physics has shown that the universe is fine-tuned for life i.e. of all the possible ways physical laws, initial conditions and constants of physics could have been configured, only an extremely small range is capable of supporting life. Some theists have argued that fine-tuning can be used as a premise in a design argument for the existence of God, while some other scientists and philosophers have argued that fine-tuning provides an evidence for a multiverse, a hypothesis which claim that there is more than one universe. Both approaches assume that fine-tuning require some kind of explanation. Despite the initial appeal some philosophers and scientists have denied the need of explanation for the fine-tuning. They either deny that the universe is fine-tuned for existence or else think that we should not be surprised that universe is fine-tuned, and therefore should not search for explanation. In this paper we analyse some of these claims and try to show that neither of them succeeds in demonstrating that fine-tuning does not need an explanation.