Defending The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning
  In 2011, I published a popular-level book, The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why
the Universe is Not Designed for Us. It investigated a common claim found in
contemporary religious literature that the parameters of physics and cosmology
are so delicately balanced, so "fine-tuned," that any slight change and life in
the universe would have been impossible. I concluded that while the precise
form of life we find on Earth would not exist with slight changes in these
parameters, some form of life could have evolved over a parameter range that is
not infinitesimal, as often claimed. Postdoctoral fellow Luke Barnes has
written a lengthy, highly technical review [arXiv:1112.4647] of the scientific
literature on the fine-tuning problem. I have no significant disagreement with
that literature and no prominent physicist or cosmologist has disputed my basic
conclusions. Barnes does not invalidate these conclusions and misunderstands
and misrepresents much of what is in the book.
