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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 December 2015
In the first section of this paper, I discuss a quantum mechanical account, which is endorsed by the MIT physicist, Alan Guth, of the origin of what Guth believes to have been an absolutely first universe. I argue that, though his explanation is unsound, there is no reason to think that it needs to be replaced by a supernaturalist one. In the second section, I argue that though Professor Steven Weinberg's tentative explanation of the apparent fine-tuning of the cosmological constant is unacceptable, we need not accept a supernaturalist account of the coming about of intelligent life.
1 On page 76 of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, (3rd Edition, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1974) Hume says: ‘…we may define a cause to be an object followed by another and where all the objects similar to the first one are followed by objects similar to the second.’
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